I don't really think there is anything unusual about it. It just kinda looks like a barren land and a bit of a dust storm

Muppet,

I'll look for the Nasa pic..
But in the meantime, It looks to be a Viking photo.
Not sure if Viking 1 or 2...But thats a good place to start..

Umm guys, who cares about the clouds, what in the world are those 3 shiney things floating there. The one near the ground is the most visible.

I never considered the possibility of clouds on Mars i really dont know why, it has an atmosphere after all. I learnt something new and that as my young daughter would say is "very, very cool"

I really dont know what those are, dust specks on the lense maybe? I still think it would be worth while cleaning the picture up and maybe enhancing those spots.

The enhanced ones that Muppet posted look very regular and almost mettalic tho.

I'm 99% sure they're scratches and chips on the protective glass(or other) cover of the camera. The light is defracted through the non-even surface and you get exactly this effect.

I would guess, that these "things"
Are image artifacts, that formed around data dropouts.
Like the halo effect (aliasing) that you get when you have contrasting
sections of a jpeg image.

I'm not sure what kind of compression algorithm they used when
downloading data way back in the 70's..

I DO know that this was not the kind of camera most of us are familira with.

It was more like a scanner ( a vertical slit in the imager), one line at a time, Moving horizontally for each line as it scanned..

Yeah i think you are prob right, they do look too regular for dust spots. Nice one mate.

We could probably confirm either way by finding other images from the same camera (ideally taken before and after this one). If it a dust / scratch issue there would be matching marks on other pictures. Otherwise it would be a data issue. (unless there is a plate swapping/cleaning mechanism)

My money's staying on scratches though..

Originally posted by spacedoubt
It was more like a scanner ( a vertical slit in the imager), one line at a time, Moving horizontally for each line as it scanned..

..although the fact all the marks are vertical... that would tally with it being a data issue on this type of camera.... Hmm..

I may sway yet..


[EDITED to make some kind of sense gramatically...just]

[edit on 10-6-2004 by muppet]

I think, that if a lot of folks that have a digital camera, would
analyze their own photos, pixel by pixel, they would find a lot
of unusual "thingies" in the images.

And thats with "New Milleneum" technology, not 70's tech..

Maybe someone could find us a link that contains the Specs for the
Viking imaging sytem? I'm having trouble finding something with enough info on it..

It's probably image artifacts since each one looks to be a single pixel, if you blow it up enough you can see some are black, blue, yellow, white, peach, different colors throughout the picture.

Ive had a look and cant find anything either, cant imagine that its classified aftyer all this time ...... ill keep looking.

[edit on 11-6-2004 by Janus]

Originally posted by Janus
I dont see any UFOs but i do see a cloud formation, that would suggest water or some kind of liquid in the atosphere wouldnt it? Perhaps its a high altitude dust cloud or some thing of that nature. Its worth hving a closer look tho.

Yea they do look like clouds, but would they necessarily produce water? Or some other type of substance?