Anomalies on the martian horizon

Ive been looking at some of my saved mars images and running them through some basic processing in Photoshop. This image turned out to be quite interesting as the horizon contained some potential anomalies.

Firstly I unfortunately dont know anything about this image (Name/Which rover etc). If somebody could let me know some info it would be very much appreciated.

The processed image can be viewed by following the link below:

Processed Mars Panorama inc. original image

A sample of the 'structures' is below:



The image probably just contains some strange imaging artifacts but I thought it was interesting enough to post.

Let me know your thoughts guys.

I see nothing here except a poor image with low resolution.

reply to post by timelike


Did you click the link?

reply to post by PaulWillocks



Twice. It looks to me like some famous Martian white clouds over some very distant mountains. Nothing here which suggests alien artefacts to me. What is your interpretation?

I am not a photoshop expert, but couldn't you take a photo of something like the Mojave desert, something where we all know there is nothing on the horizon, and try to duplicate your findings? Basically show that on a similar picture of a known location, under the same filters, would not show the same artifacts on the horizon?

If you did that, I would have more faith that you found something here, not just a side effect of the filtering process.

reply to post by timelike


My interpretation is that there could be something there. I think there has been a crude attempt to hide it. It does however look like there are some repeated patterns which could be down to imaging atifacts.

I feel that there maybe a single 'structure' which for some reason seems to be repeated.

The strange thing to me is the placement along the horizon.

I see something alright. Jpeg compression artifacts where the less compressed ground meet the more compressed sky (simple color).

Those look EXACTLY like a jpeg 'compression artifact' or 'blocking artifact' caused by lossy jpeg compression. This is caused by the jpeg compression software attempting to interpolate (basically "guess at") the color of a pixel based on the surrounding pixels. It does this in blocks of pixels (usually 8x8 blocks), so if for instance that block contains both brown soil and gray sky, the software's "guess" could be inaccurate.

This won't happen with the raw file, nor with a jpeg file saved with 'non-lossy' compression.

If you go to this page on the NASA website: marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov...
you can find this photo compressed in both formats -- lossy and non-lossy. Scroll down the page until you get to "18-May-2004". You'll see this photo labeled "Bonneville Crater Panorama". If you download the 39 MB file (I don't think you can view it directly), then zoom in on the hills, you will see there are no compression artifacts. The file is large, so you probably need a high-speed internet connection (cable, DSL, etc.)

I cropped a part of the hills out of that large photo. These are the same two hills that are "zoomed-in" on the far right of the OP's photo, and the ones in the OP's example:




[edit on 1/21/2008 by Soylent Green Is People]

Originally posted by PaulWillocks
reply to post by timelike

 

My interpretation is that there could be something there. I think there has been a crude attempt to hide it....

I suggest you the "Conspiracy Theory Googles" off and have another look. If NASA/ESA can send probes to Mars and cat incredible high res images back, I think it very unlikely that, IF NASA would want to hide anything, that they would do a quick photoshop or someother crude attempt to cover their tracts.

a single 'structure' which for some reason seems to be repeated.

Really? I must disagree. That whole structure covers most of the horizon, can you imagine how big it would be? It would be large enough to reflect the suns rays and probably draw up the Martian White Clouds. I've been following Mars very cearful (It is in the night sky at the moment) and I can assure there has been no such anomalies...

The strange thing to me is the placement along the horizon.

Suggests further that it's a processing artefact to me...

At that distance, and resolution, anything would be a guess, IMO. It could even be a butte, such as we have on earth in the American southwest. At that distance it would be hard to tell a straight line from a slightly irregular one.

And I have to agree that "crude" doesn't fly very well in this day and age when pre-schoolers can use photoshop. Surely even NASA has a few bright "artists" to work on things. I might believe that they would completely overlook something before I would think that a crude cover up was the best they could do.

I've recently been analysing the image from the nasa website showing a panorama from Mars (pic: 207495 Main_Spirit)

I've noticed a strange shape on the horizon and after analysing it with photoshop it looks like a large building. I'd like to post images of my enhancements here but this is my first post and I have no idea how to do that? If someone could tell me or maybe I could email them for someone else to put here that would be great.

The image reminds me of the kind of picture you see when you view area 51's hangars from the distance.

Kind regards

Brian.