Object in Mars sky ???.. What is it?

Hi all .. me again ...

I was looking at some of the Mars pics from this set Sol 1984
I noticed something that is possibly wrong with the rovers wheels.. so I started a thread here about it..

Whilst going over this particular set of images I noticed an odd black mark in the top left corner of one of the pics.. and as you'll see in the other thread I made mention of it there as part of the question to if the Spirit Rover has got some problems.

Well, I left that as it was and carried on looking at the pics of Sol 1984 and realised that this black mark is in several pictures, but not all.. Being curious as to what's happening i checked each photo again with a lot more care..

And I found something else that does NOT appear to be a problem with the Rover or the images... I hope someone here can shed some light on what it is that I have found..

The images in question are the last three of the main set of images in the Sol 1984 set
This one
This one
And this one

So, let's be sure to establish that the black mark at the VERY TOP of the images is NOT the object I am refering to..
It is the less dark object below that in the sky that is rather well defined in the first image, fades out in the second image and is gone in the third image..
Here are the first and second images zoomed in so oyu can also see how it has moved across the sky..
(center of pic, above horizon, below black mark)
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/5dbf800fa1a9.png[/atsimg]
(Has now moved to upper right of pic and has faded)
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/12e420713fff.png[/atsimg]

Going in a bit closer reveals the object a bit more but still does not clarify it any further but does leave an interesting question..

Zoom of first image
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/1c28def8f0fe.png[/atsimg]
Zoom of second image
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/3681d105d2d4.png[/atsimg]

What is it? In all the pictures we have seen of Mars, i don't think anyone has ever spotted anything at all in the sky.. not even as an sun spot or lense flare or anything like that.. and for a dark object in the sky to move and fade out rasies a few questions..

If there is a wind, what is light enough to be blown around like that that is not a rock, a lump of dust, a dried leaf, a paper/plastic bag, part of the rovers balloon landing bags, grannies hanky??

If there is no wind, what could be on Mars that is not an insect, a bird, a plane, helicoptor, hot air balloon, swamp gas..

If it is none of the above then what camera defects could give this kind of image...

Or is it something completely different?

Originally posted by Extralien


If there is a wind, what is light enough to be blown around like that that is not a rock, a lump of dust, a dried leaf, a paper/plastic bag, part of the rovers balloon landing bags, grannies hanky??

There is a lot of wind on Mars. And a lot of dust.

I think your right, it seems to have moved away from the camera to the left, even allowing for movement from the rover, it shouldn't be there.

Obviously if we believe what we are told, Birds, Chinese lanterns, pieces of paper, Weather Balloons , and all the usual explanations are out, cant be dust because it changed it's position.

well spotted.

The speckles all over the images, they are interference right? is that from our end ? it seems to get worse over the three pictures.

reply to post by ziggystar60


That Video explains movement along the ground and on the horizon, it doesn't explain anything in the sky, which the OP has seen in the pictures.

reply to post by azzllin


Yes there are a lot of white speckles all over the image.. even appearing in the sky in places..

If the object in question is dust, then just how hard was the wind blowig at the time and how many shots did the camera take and at what shutter speed to be able to take two pictures of the (assumed) same piece of dust as it flew through the air..

It would also have to be quite a large piece of dust too.. it does seem to be quite a way off.. It's not something that is up close to the lense like the obvious bit that seems to be stuck to the lense in the very top of the picture.

Swamp Gas.

Line 2 for you.




Mod Note: One Line Post – Please Review This Link.

[edit on 21/8/2009 by Sauron]

Chinese lanterns flown across space, that or venus reflection.





Mod Note: One Line Post – Please Review This Link.

[edit on 21/8/2009 by Sauron]

reply to post by Extralien


The first two pictures you showed (the ones where you showed how the object moved from one frame to the next) is actually two pictures taken at the exact same time by the navigation camera, which has binocular vision (i.e. there are two Nav Cams -- a "left eye" and a "right eye").

You can tell that they were taken at the exact same time because the file name contains a time stamp. Here are the two image file names:

2N302522183EFFB1E5P1947L0M1.HTML
2N302522183EFFB1E5P1947R0M1.HTML

The first character tells us that it is Spirit (Spirit = 2, Opportunity = 1). The second character tells us it's the navigation camera (N). The fourth-to-the last character is the left or right camera eye ("L" or "R").

The time stamp is in the third through eleventh characters...
...the time stamp is based on the number of seconds since January 1, 2000 (many computers use similar methods for telling the date). The time on both of these images is "302522183". That is 302,522,183 seconds since January 1, 2000 -- or about 9 years, 7 months, and 3 days.

Therefore, as I said, those two pictures you presented as the object "moving" from one frame to the next are actually taken at the exact same time by different lenses. So either it is two different dust specs on the different lenses (that later blew off), or an image artifact, or it was one very small (dust-sized) object that was close to the rover.

I say it could be small and close, because something close to the cameras would look to be in different positions relative to the left and right camera eye. If it was far away, such as near the horizon, it would not look to be in two very different positions relative to the two cameras.



[edit on 8/21/2009 by Soylent Green Is People]

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


Excellent info.. thank you very much..
Learn something new everyday here

Now, if you would just be so kind to tell everyone what it is that happens to be flying by and we'll all be happy little bunnies

Thanks for that though.. I never knew that data stuff.. funny how one lense sees it a lot fainter than the other though

Oooohhh.. but that would also give us the distance away from the camera too.. would it not?

If we know the distance between the two cameras ... get the difference between the object in relation to the horizon and we should be able to work out the distance.. which would also give us the size of it too...
well, something like that anyway...

Originally posted by Extralien
If we know the distance between the two cameras ... get the difference between the object in relation to the horizon and we should be able to work out the distance.. which would also give us the size of it too...
well, something like that anyway...

And we can make one of those stereo images.

I will try to do it.


Edit: It doesn't work, it's too close and too faint to be appear on the stereo image.

But judging by the displacement of the gnomon/colour target at the bottom of the photo, what we see on the two photos is not the same thing.

The photo from the left camera has the gnomon/colour target more to the right because its seen from the left point of view, so the object should also be more to the right on the left camera photo and more to the left on the right camera photo, right?

Considering that, I think they are two different things, probably dust (that is a very dusty environment).

[edit on 21/8/2009 by ArMaP]

Just a reminder to the membership, if you have nothing useful to add to the topic of this thread then don't post.
I.E. one liners.
Thank
Moderator

How would you attract animals on Mars non-verbally? If you want to attract ducks,what sort of decoys would you carve and float in a lake? I chose the common house fly as my model(1987). they move,yes don't they? The black dots blurry and close to the cams could be flies,or if you're an optimist,bees.The further,smaller dots,especially bright dots could be artificial flying objects reflecting sunlight,unlike birds,(black dots).I certainly can't prove this,now orin the near future.

reply to post by Extralien


My friend, it's extremely important to know what we are looking at:
the first thing to do, is to learn how images names are made, because it's all there, believe it or not.
I won't bore you with the other explanations, but the relevant point is this one:
Image # 23:
2N302522183EFFB1E5P1947R0M1.HTML
Image # 24:
2N302524484EFFB1E5P1945L0M1.HTML

right before the R0m1.html there's a letter: that's the letter that identifies the camera which caught the event, since what we are looking at was caught by a STEREO camera: in this case we have some event that was caught by one camera (LEFT) and ignored by the other one . Hence, Whatever it was, it was very, extremely close to the camera. No bugs of course, hence i'd say DUST.
Edit:
Soylent Green Is People covered it better than me.


[edit on 21/8/2009 by internos]

If it's dust then perhaps you'd find the exact same blotch of dust in a whole series of a days shooting,one sol. If it is instead living,breathing ,moving,like a "fly" then chances are the fly will move on between frames and disappear or re-appear.If these blotches seem more like dots or elongated like pill shapes,then perhaps the blurring doesn't capture the suble wings,but just the main body.

To be honest I don't give much credit to any pics of mars (or the moon for that matter) since it's already been well documented on this site as well as others that NASA doctors the images before they are released to us.

So that thing could be dust, or literally whatever TPTB want to hint at it being just to mess with us. So it's hard to make an accurate estimate.

reply to post by vze2xjjk

If it's dust on the lens or filter wheel then yes, but if it was dust flying then it would look exactly like that.

Considering that at least one dust devil was seen on that area I wouldn't be surprised if it was exactly that.

reply to post by Genus

The only problem with that is that the "well documented doctoring" of the photos by NASA, from what I have seen is just a display of ignorance of how things work and confusion between real photos and other images.

Ordinarily my oddly named friend I would agree, as some of the pictures people claim to that effect look fine to me.

However, I don't think confusion and not understanding their process explains the constant smudging oves strategical locations on pictures and completely altering they sky to make it appear blank mistakes by the camera... It's always made me skeptical

reply to post by Genus

Well, my problem is that I haven't seen one clear example of smudging of photos.

Some time ago there was a thread on ATS with "evidence" of NASA tampering the photos from Apollo missions, but the suspicious photos were not from NASA sites, the NASA photos were good, the other photos presented in other sites had some strange things in them, mostly because they were bad copies of the original NASA photos.

I definately hear what you mean there, some sites do claim that very thing and when I look, nothing is smudged in the originals.

However, a while back I noticed a guy named Joseph Skipper talking about that subject and when I looked at the pics he was pointing out, sure enough, NASA's own originals were smudged. Don't know ATS's overal take on if he's legit or not though so as always I stay wary.