Has Anyone Tried Asking NASA About Anomalous Images?

I noticed a link at the NASA website that takes questions.

Ask NASA

Public Communications Office
NASA Headquarters
Suite 5K39
Washington, DC 20546-0001
(202) 358-0001 (Office)
(202) 358-3469 (Fax)

Please allow 10-15 business days for processing. For email inquiries, be sure to include a subject and do not include any attachments.

So I figured, why not. What can it hurt to ask. It might be interesting to see what they say. That is if they reply.

Here's the question I asked.

I'm curious about what the experts think of a picture taken by Mars Global Surveyor.

The image shows a large golf ball shaped object inside a crater. The light and shadows in the image show that the object bulges above the bottom of the crater in a spherical way. The object also has lines which could be structural support. The object appears to be a dome shaped structure. Of course, that's a layman's interpretation.

Here's an image featuring the object.
www.libertythink.com...

Source
ida.wr.usgs.gov...

What do the experts think of the object in the image?

Are there any plans to send a rover into the area to take a closer look?

You will probably recognize the image I'm asking about.


I'm eagerly waiting to hear from them, but in the mean time I thought I'd start a thread to ask people at ATS a question.

Has anyone here at ATS had tried simply asking NASA a question?

IMO it is only worth asking questions when you have a very anomalous case (i.e. impossible). Weird features on any planet/moon are only going to get you the standard answer "thank you for your interest, bla bla".

Well it's been a little over a month since I emailed NASA.

No answer.

I knew I was asking the wrong question, but that's what made it fun.

Maybe I should have asked about their new mission to TRY to find water ice at the pole.

I wonder whether they'll find it?

Actually, I'm just being sarcastic. I'm pretty sure they've already found the ice they wanted.

From what I remember, I believe in almost every case any time you ask a NASA official about anything anomalous (regardless of perspective or intent), they pretty much refuse to comment.

When I made my film, I used NASA UFO footage at the beginning. I ordered expensive beta tapes of the usual suspects. Curiously, all of the UFO pieces were edited out with cutaway shots of astronauts, ground control, etc.

Coincidence?

reply to post by bobbyt


Actually, in this thread you can read a swedish article (which I translated to english) where a NASA scientist comments on accusations about NASA manipulating their images from Mars:

www.abovetopsecret.com...


[edit on 8-7-2008 by ziggystar60]

reply to post by ziggystar60


Let me let you in on a little "secret" - NASA "manipulates" EVERY image from mars because posting the true "raw" image would not be useful to anyone. Raw images must be processed into viewable jpgs first, which usually scales a 12 bit image into a regular 8 bit image that everyone can view, and they usually offer it as a jpg for easy download and web presentation. Without the proper software to translate the raw image, the raw data is useless. This doesn't even account for the manipulations needed to combine a set of monochromatic images shot through filters into a full color image. NASA gracefully performs these steps for you (while offering every single monochromatic jpg before any further manipulations), so you should be thanking them for kindly "manipulating" their data into something useful. The very people who complain about "manipulation" would be clueless if NASA handed them the raw "unmanipulated" images.

[edit on 8-7-2008 by ngchunter]

reply to post by ngchunter


Thanks for the info, I am familiar with most of it, since I follow ArMaP's and Internos' posts and comments. They have both been excellent teatchers for me.

But just to make it clear, I was not questioning how NASA prosesses their images, that was not my intention with this particular comment. (Although you may have noticed that I believe NASA haven't told us the whole truth and nothing but the truth about Mars and the moon.)

I just wanted to point to the article I translated, to show that on this rare occasion, someone from NASA actually DID comment on a conspiracy theory. I thought that was interesting in itself.



[edit on 8-7-2008 by ziggystar60]

Originally posted by ziggystar60
I just wanted to point to the article I translated, to show that on this rare occasion, someone from NASA actually DID comment on a conspiracy theory. I thought that was interesting in itself.

It's related to the topic at hand, I'll give you that much. I just don't find it particularly interesting that a NASA rep decided to give a tongue lashing to conspiracists who mislead people about NASA's images. It gives the conspiracists too much legitimacy imho, but perhaps given its popularity it could no longer be ignored.