Something large and white in the horizon of Mars, SPIRIT ROVER IMAGE 2007

I doubt this is a man made dome on the surface (because its 2007 and the secret space program would have to be quite far for them to already have a secret dome on the planet in my view) of Mars but here goes.

I was going to make a thread about high-res pictures of Mars, so we can print them on the wall for example.

Then I stumbled on a 44 megapixel panoramic picture taken by the Spirit Rover back in 2007.

I clicked full screen and saw something like a pyramid shaped dome in the distance.

I have attatched an image. The Star Wars destroyer and the dome is pasted by me in the photo so its not really in the image but its as a "humoristic addition".





Original images link:
Images link
Rovers page

a reply to: SpaceBoyOnEarth

To be clear, a dome or pyramid is a bit much

But, that does look like a light source to me. Possibly a reflection.

Can anyone correlate the location of the photo being taken and nearby landing sites? Could it possibly be the reflection off of debris from a previous landing?


Regardless of what it could be, it's pretty interesting, if not significant.

Yea I can tell you I just stumbled upon this like 1-2 hours ago by accident. It made me do the thread "just in case" there is something to talk about.

good detective work, old man

white dust....concrete plant over there....

a reply to: SpaceBoyOnEarth

It's Mont Blanc.....
On a more serious note, it"s more than likely an electronic glitch

Here is text about the picture:



"
NASA'S Mars Exploration Rover Spirit captured this westward view from atop a low plateau where Sprit spent the closing months of 2007.

After several months near the base of the plateau called "Home Plate" in the inner basin of the Columbia Hills range inside Gusev Crater, Spirit climbed onto the eastern edge of the plateau during the rover's 1,306th Martian day, or sol, (Sept. 5, 2007). It examined rocks and soils at several locations on the southern half of Home Plate during September and October. It was perched near the western edge of Home Plate when it used its panoramic camera (Pancam) to take the images used in this view on sols 1,366 through 1,369 (Nov. 6 through Nov. 9, 2007). With its daily solar-energy supply shrinking as Martian summer turned to fall, Spirit then drove to the northern edge of Home Plate for a favorable winter haven. The rover reached that northward-tilting site in December, in time for the fourth Earth-year anniversary of its landing on Mars. Spirit reached Mars on Jan. 4, 2004, Universal Time (Jan. 3, 2004, Pacific Standard Time). It landed at a site at about the center of the horizon in this image.

This panorama covers a scene spanning left to right from southwest to northeast. The western edge of Home Plate is in the foreground, generally lighter in tone than the more distant parts of the scene. A rock-dotted hill in the middle distance across the left third of the image is "Tsiolkovski Ridge," about 30 meters or 100 feet from the edge of Home Plate and about that same distance across. A bump on the horizon above the left edge of Tsiolkovski Ridge is "Grissom Hill," about 8 kilometers or 5 miles away. At right, the highest point of the horizon is "Husband Hill," to the north and about 800 meters or half a mile away.

This view combines separate images taken through Pancam filters centered on wavelengths of 753 nanometers, 535 nanometers and 432 nanometers. It is presented in a false-color stretch to bring out subtle color differences in the scene.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell University

Image Addition Date:
2008-01-03"

Nasas page for the picture




So now we have some kinda location for the picture.

a reply to: FHomerK

here i think

originally posted by: nelloh62
a reply to: SpaceBoyOnEarth

On a more serious note, it"s more than likely an electronic glitch

What are you basing that possibility on?

I don't think this is a one camera panoramic but a composite panorama made up of 4 photos because if you look at the rover there is 4 missing section joints with the rover being mis-aligned yet directly above the rover misalignment the rocks a magically aligned.

originally posted by: SpaceBoyOnEarth
I doubt this is a man made dome on the surface (because its 2007 and the secret space program would have to be quite far for them to already have a secret dome on the planet in my view) of Mars but here goes.

It actually took me quite a while to see what you meant, but I finally found it (second image features a limited histogram, showing the actual range where the image has color information).





However, at that distance it could be literally anything: from dust devils, large dunes reflecting sunlight up to a stitching artifact. But nice that you spotted it and thanks for sharing!

I was able to find a satellite picture of Mars from that area.

So called home plate is the thing in the lower right corner where you see text like: "Sol 1506" and "Sol 1293". There is a white round thing under those 2 texts and it is a circle that the rover actually went. Picture was taken at Sol 1306 so its in the white circle area.

In the original photos text, it says the image is towards west. I can't tell if the white thing is actually more south than straight west and thereby not in the picture but I read that on the Mars horizon, if you are at a height of about 6 feet (180cm), you can see to approximately a distance of 3 miles (4.5km).

Since "home plate" is on an elevated position, the white area probably is farther than what this picture shows. This picture has a width of 5km.

Area is mostly flat on the satellite picture and the white thing must thereby be further than what the satellite picture can show.






We need to find a satellite picture that goes a little bit more west and maybe a little south. I think a distance of to 5km eachway should show if that area is supposed to have a mountain which top could theoretically be a natural reason for the white thing.


If no mountain is present, well, yea, something...hmmm

I believe it is some editing artifact-
The 'peak' isn't visible in this panorama
10216 looks more like the original than 10214.
Either way the fact it is only showing up in 1 image and not the other 2 makes me believe it is not an actual structure.

Not a 'camera malfunction' no, rather a software artifact or bad editing skills

Ok, I dont want to scare anyone but.......this is getting there.

I downloaded the FULL picture Tif version with no compression (130MB).

I went to Photohop and I put brightness to minimum and contrast to minimum and nothing else. I wanted to highlight the bright area.

What happened is the following.....this is the only bright spot on the whole horizon.

Here is the result:






The pyramid triangle is not the only white thing. It has a little white on its right and on its left. You can see it in the picture.

I scanned the whole horizon in Photoshop and saw no other white areas.

Even though it is only a picture by a camera, pixel in the end is colour information. The white colour pyramid like structure is of that kind of a colour in the image that it seems to exist only in the pyramid area and just a little to left and right, like seen in the top of this last picture.

If there would not be those 2 white little lines going horizontally near the white tall thing, then it probably would be a glitch. But because it seems to cast light left and right or they are of structures that themselves cast light, something else must be the case than "camera malfunction"

originally posted by: jeep3r

originally posted by: SpaceBoyOnEarth
I doubt this is a man made dome on the surface (because its 2007 and the secret space program would have to be quite far for them to already have a secret dome on the planet in my view) of Mars but here goes.

It actually took me quite a while to see what you meant, but I finally found it (second image features a limited histogram, showing the actual range where the image has color information).

However, at that distance it could be literally anything: from dust devils, large dunes reflecting sunlight up to a stitching artifact. But nice that you spotted it and thanks for sharing!

Do I see grass/other greeny surface?

a reply to: jeep3r

it could be literally anything: from dust devils, large dunes reflecting sunlight up to a stitching artifact.

What I thought, the image is a composite , 'stitched' together as can be seen on zoom in the foreground around the mast...

a reply to: SpaceBoyOnEarth

Awesome pic of Mars. Zoomable in the link, what a torturred lifeless landscape and, We Are There !

image splicing glitch of some sort

Kinda cool. Could be dust storms. It would be real cool if you caught a small meteor strike , a main hit and a fragment.

a reply to: SpaceBoyOnEarth

Interesting..
I enhanced it..
Looks like a nuke going off in the horizon.

Stitching problem, the "pyramid" doesn't exist on the original photos, available here.