NASA Scandal dealing with pictures from Mars

I've heard from different places that Nasa is involved in a conspiracy with editing the pictures from mars giving it a red, dead, no chance of life type of appeal. While all this is happening, we have the British probes showing non-red images of the planet mars.

Here is the website from the guy(JASON MARTELL) who makes these claims. One of his fields of expertise is image editing and hes undone NASA's red appeal image editing and restored them back to normal. But again you be the judges of them.

xfacts.com...

[edit on 11-6-2004 by Kano]

More junk based on Keith Laney's misleading work..

Check out this article for an explanation of why simply combining the 3 raw data plates gives a false representation.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

[edit on 11-6-2004 by Kano]

Kano,

Dang your fast!
Was just about to link your thread.

I have to say, I learned a lot there..thanks

Being one of those who works with these images to a degree, I can surely vouch for their authenticity and limited editing. Any claims otherwise is just BS and speculation on behalf of those who are either mis-informed or just ignorant of the facts. Most any edits are to enhance/improve the image quality and since the 'public' format is utilizing JPEG (lossy) compression, some minor enhancement may be needed to 'sharpen' them slightly or attempt a more pleasing color balance.

As the other thread points out, these 'color' images are approximations but due to the fact that images are taken at different exposure levels for each range of 'color' (maybe to bring out specific detail at that spectrum), the 'color' that results may be 'false' to 'real-life' as if seen with the naked eye. That is one of the reasons the sperules seen strewn across the landscape are called "blueberries" even though they are not really blue. This can be very useful in identifying general composition of different objects in the image-frame.

Many want to believe the martian sky is red but in fact, it is actually blue but with a red hue showing due to atmospheric 'haze' due to dust aloft as you view towards the horizon (this is true here on Earth as well). Since most all images normally taken are towards the surface or horizon, many never see this color at all. Some images released show a 'blue' sky but in most cases, it is a 'false' balance due to offset color-balance of the filter-set used to create the image.

I hope this explains it somewhat.

-Pandelirium
Moderator/OPS - #maestro #cassini chat - irc.freenode.net

Yeah, I gotta figure out how Kano and Banshee are so quick on the draw. Do you guys have an ATS database sitting right there ready for these instances?

Good work, Kano.

Cheers Kano for the great Mars colour imaging articles!

I was wondering, do you know if NASA have released any of the camera/filter calibration data, or details of the normalizing algorithms they used? From reading your articles I get the impression they hadn't released it back in January.

If we had this I might be able to go some way towards comping some more accurate colour images together. In particular if there are any graphs of the filter responses at different wavelengths, like the pigment response ones they've already given you, I think I can use this info to calculate the responses of three "virtual" r g and b filters and therefore come up with "true-er colour" images.

Also, do you happen to know of any images that were taken with all(7?) filters in turn?



[edit on 11-6-2004 by muppet]

I especially like the conclusion...about the coloring "changes" having to do with the dome cratar...no evidence...just pure conjecture...gotta love it!...How random!

One point though. Laney's color edits are useful in seeing the martian landscape in more detail. When everything is reddish it is very hard to see any details.

Lukefj

I have to admit, Kano you make one informative report. That was more information then I ever needed lol.

Originally posted by muppet
I was wondering, do you know if NASA have released any of the camera/filter calibration data, or details of the normalizing algorithms they used? From reading your articles I get the impression they hadn't released it back in January.

Each signal plate is just amplified to cover the entire range, linear amplification as far as I know, no real algorithm there. The rover keeps track of by how much it amplified each plate by and it sends that data (and assorted other data) back along with the images. (The images are amplified to increase the SNR of the transmission back to earth).

If we had this I might be able to go some way towards comping some more accurate colour images together. In particular if there are any graphs of the filter responses at different wavelengths, like the pigment response ones they've already given you, I think I can use this info to calculate the responses of three "virtual" r g and b filters and therefore come up with "true-er colour" images.

Heh hrm, this is one place my memory fails me, I vaguely remember seeing this somewhere along the line, but am unable to locate it again. They are 20nm bandpass filters so it is effectively a series of bars at each of the filter wavelengths. I'll keep looking around and see if I can find it again.

Also, do you happen to know of any images that were taken with all(7?) filters in turn?

Yeah just have a browse around the raw images directories at JPL Rover site.

Here is a link to a page where someone has combined as many color
plates as available. Very Straightforward page. But some
REAL BEAUTIES!

Mars color