some think odd in this pic off mars

After haveing a quick root around ive found out that the air preasure on mars means that there is no liquid water on mars but it does exist as water vapour and ice. That would mean that clouds of water are not an impossibility but would be there is small amounts. Apparenty if you lugged a load of water to mars and released it into the atmosphere then it would snow but not rain.
zebu.uoregon.edu...

Yes, here are some more NASA Pics... Definately clouds.....

Here is the NASA site that explains the clouds...
mpfwww.jpl.nasa.gov...

More pics if interested:
apod.gsfc.nasa.gov...
apod.gsfc.nasa.gov...
marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov...
marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov...
marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov...


[edit on 10-6-2004 by JCMinJapan]

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.

Try downloading the tiff image, for best clarity..


Original Viking data for pic

external image

After having a close look at the pic i think its either 1) Blemishes on the image or 2) Dust or other debris on the lense. The ones that seem to be in the sky are repeated on the body of the craft that i have put circles round, also i have arrowed some blemishes so it may be a combination of the above. I may be wrong, what do you think?


external image

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..

..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]

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