!!!Mars Blue Sky & Water!!!

Just my opinions -

With today's technology I'm surprised they cant take an image in true colour... I know the pictures are beamed back and that's probably the excuse... but if your spending Billions of $ on sending a rover to Mars then you would want to see what colours are there.. wouldn't you? This would help with identifying rocks, subsoil, atmosphere etc. more accurately. They sent a man to the moon when computers were hardly around yet they cant take an image over distance without accuracy. Think how may problems the first space missions NASA had to overcome with new technology.

Also I don't really buy into the cleaning of the panels thing.... but if wind blew the dust onto the rover in the first place where did the CLEAN wind come from? And IF those pictures showing the clean panels are true it does beg the question how did it clean in the cracks, but that's if these pictures are accurate.

I'm still haven't fully made up my mind on this subject though so feel free to debunk me.

reply to post by zorgon


Selective cleaning, right lol The dust all tends to weight the same and will be removed easier from some materials more than others. In your image the metallic surfaces will obviously relinquish the dust back to the Martian landscape easier than the solar panels. Lets not forget wind direction too.

Again, why would 'someone' clean some bits and not others? It really doesnt look like 'intelligent' cleaning to me, the rovers have more of a wind swept look

Originally posted by musikman
You mean to tell me there's not a single piece of optical equipment on these multi-million dollar rovers capable of taking TRUE color pictures?

Again, I'm no expert on this topic and maybe I'm missing something, but why the need for all these "COLOR CORRECTIONS" everytime a new picture is released?

The following might help:

marsrovers.nasa.gov...

Please note that having to take a mosaic and then paste if together means shooting under different conditions, so some color equivilsation needs to take place no matter what. In fact, your analog or digital camera doesn't really produce "true color". If you are really serious about it, you would need to buy a device like "Eye-One" (I actually did at some point). What they did with color chips looks like a similar procedure. They had identical chips here on Earth and could verify that the end result was satisfactory.

As to having a simple optical Wallmart style camera -- I'm afriad that you don't have that luxury when you need to produce science which apparently is harvested in IR and UV spectra, for which you need a dedicated setup.

As for color separatation with filters, that's a comletely valid setup imho, and acceptable for color photography. It would be a little silly to only accept photos from a camera that is "Wallmart certified point-and-shoot".


[edit on 23-1-2008 by buddhasystem]

Originally posted by II HAL II
.... but if wind blew the dust onto the rover in the first place where did the CLEAN wind come from?

I doubt all Martian wind is dusty. Remember the landscape is littered with 'clean' rocks too.

to me this looks pretty weird :/ What do you guys think?

[edit on 23-1-2008 by Sodem]

reply to post by Sodem


A rock which split under temperature gradient?

Originally posted by zorgon
But they DO know what the color should look like... they just prefer to tint it reddish just like the conspiracy sites love to tint it with too much blue...

No, they don't know the colour of every object that appears on the photos, and that is the only way of recreating the real colours without all the data.

That is why I posted that colour target with two yellow squares, one was originally white, the other was really yellow, but without information of its original colour we do not have enough information to recreate it.

Originally posted by ArMaP
No, they don't know the colour of every object that appears on the photos,

They do not need to... they only need THREE Red Green Blue... The primary colors of light are red, green, and blue. ALL other colors are simply mixtures of those and white light is all three together

Even in printing you only use three...
CMYK refers to the 4 ink colors used by the printing press. C is cyan (blue), M is magenta (red), Y is yellow, and K is black,

If they match the images to the red/green/blue indicators on the sundial, and that matches what it looks like on Earth then you will have a TRUE COLOR image . Saying they don't know the color of EVERY object is rediculous... If you set your viewer so the target colors align then everything else in that photo is correct as you see it... this is basic light properties... not rocket science (and that is the reason all space missions HAVE a true color target on board )

Everything we see is based on reflected light.... the basics of light and color have long been known even your high res TV set only uses red/green/blue to create all the colors you see...

To say anything else in my opinion is deliberately confusing... but then that is the mission of every true skeptic...

thegalleriesatmoore.org...

Now if you want to argue that the light levels are lower due to the distance from the sun well that is a different story... however I have seen many Rover images in full bright sunlight



[edit on 23-1-2008 by zorgon]

I found a pic of MARS from the ESA website, looks like there's grass on the planet:

reply to post by zorgon


Don't you understand that if one of the channels is missing then it's impossible to know what the original looked like?

Did you saw the colour calibration target I posted?

Here it is again, in case you missed it.

There is no amount of colour calibration that will show that the yellow square on the fourth column, third row was originally yellow and the two squares on the bottom left were pure white and an almost white grey, the colours you have on both squares are (almost) the same because the lack of data makes them look the same.

In the same way there is no way of knowing what was the black and the blue squares (unless you read the names and/or the RGB values).

Any colour correction applied will change all colours, even if you limit your colour correction to the yellows, then you will change all yellows, and if you turn them back to white then you will turn to white the one who was originally yellow.

reply to post by zorgon


Sorry, Z, to be contradictory...but Red, Green, Blue are not primary colors.

Let's not confuse the issue...Red, Yellow, and Blue are primary colors. Every color on the palette can be made from those three. White and black are used to adjust or change the intensity and tone of colors.

The RGB connection on the back of your TV set is to provide a chroma separation that is specific, I believe, to the requirements of color television. Even in the old days of early color TV, we had the 'tint' control...I really doubt the pictures from the Rovers are that rudimentary.

When our eyes intrepret color, it is because of the wavelengths being, as you correctly said, reflected. THAT is very different from the way the electrons and the technology is excited to produce colors in a television (or computer screen). I mean, whatever magic occurs in the TV is seen by our eyes...eyes that evolved here on Earth to see colors within a specific spectrum. We cannot see infrared, nor can we see UV. Other animals can, bees, for instance, can see into the UV.

I hope there may be some electronics techs out here who can be more specific.

These are my opinions, and to the best of my knowledge they are true and accurate.

Thanks.

*adding* I am sure ArMap knows a lot more than I, regarding how the signals from Mars to Earth are transmitted, and how or if color corrections are used, and why.

[edit on 23-1-2008 by weedwhacker]

Originally posted by weedwhacker
Sorry, Z, to be contradictory...but Red, Green, Blue are not primary colors.

Let's not confuse the issue...Red, Yellow, and Blue are primary colors.

Uh-oh ... you should better have looked up the terms "additive color mixing" and "subtractive color mixing" before posting :

en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...

Also, before anyone claims to know enough about color perception and reproduction to make bold (and supposedly educated) statements about what should or shouldn't bee seen on Mars, they should make sure to have understood the underlying basics. For starters, try ...

en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...

... and follow a few of the links.

I know it's much more complicated than any of you probably thought. Tough !

Originally posted by TheoOne
Ok, here's the much more zoomed-in image of this humanoid object -

Weird for sure.

Now here's another one of my dumb suggestions...

Why not take another picture of the SAME area from the same angle a few minutes, hours or days later?

Let's say that "humanoid" looking object was still there, that would mean what? that it IS in fact just some sort of stange rock formation right?

Now lets say a "second" picture was taken and the "humanoid" object WASN'T there... then what??

Is it fair to say that it wouldn't take much to solve this whole "humanoid" mystery one way or another??

Just food for thought.....

[edit on 24-1-2008 by musikman]

Originally posted by Estess
I found a pic of MARS from the ESA website, looks like there's grass on the planet:

OK now that is an interesting picture!!

reply to post by Estess


Can you please post a direct link to the page where you found it?

Edit: never mind, found it:

This colour picture was taken by the HRSC camera on board ESA's Mars Express, from an altitude of 320 kilometres. It shows the centre of crater Gusev with the landing site of the NASA Spirit rover (marked). Gusev is a crater of 160 kilometres diameter. Earlier in the history of Mars, it appears that this area was covered by water. Because of the probable existence of sediments from this ‘lake’, Gusev is a highly interesting target in the search for traces of water and life on Mars. The area shown measures about 60 kilometres across at the bottom; North is at the top.

www.esa.int...



[edit on 24-1-2008 by buddhasystem]

reply to post by z-bar


Thanks, z-bar, for those links. There is a difference between mixing pigments and mixing light frequencies. But, regardless of what color we see, it still comes down to biology...rods and cones in the retina of the eyes. I just hope that these discussions of whether or whether not any photos have been manipulated in order to deceive aren't polluted with confusing facts that are unrelated.

Thanks, again...I'm going to go get educated at Wiki!

Originally posted by musikman
Now lets say a "second" picture was taken and the "humanoid" object WASN'T there... then what??

That would indeed be a test to be sure... I will search my sources and see if I can find the same day's normal shots to compare

Originally posted by weedwhacker
Sorry, Z, to be contradictory...but Red, Green, Blue are not primary colors.

Be as contradictory as you like... however being sure of your facts first is the sign of a wise person...

Primary Colors of Light

EDIT TO ADD... Sorry z-bar missed your links before posting... Thanks for adding those

I suppose I should have realized that I need to be more specific here at ATS, but then I assumed since we were talking about images created by light and not paintings I made the mistake of thinking this basic understanding was 'common knowledge'

My mistake won't happen again...


Now you skeptics are trying to make something complicated out of a simple issue... why do you think they put the red/green/blue AND yellow targets on the Rovers? Why do you think that everyday they take a picture of it as well as whatever else they photograph?

So they have a reference point for the true color

I will add here one final word on the color issue...

Taken from a Lockheed Martin report on the issue...

Mars Rover Color Calibration Chart The "Sundial"

The Pancam does an acceptable job on the red, blue, and green panels; however, the yellow panel appears orange in the Pancam image. This may be a result of the unusual pigments used on the calibration target and the narrowness of the Pancam filters. The image in Figure 3 on the far right shows the calibration target taken by the Pancam on Mars. The Pancam image on Earth and the Pancam image on Mars appear quite similar. This is not the result one would expect if the illumination on Mars was substantially redder than that on Earth.

Perhaps this is the best goal for the production of color imagery from Mars. Rather than search endlessly for the unknown illumination of the surface, the color calibration charts should be used to render the Martian scenery as it would appear on Earth. Martian objects would be more easily understood if they were illuminated by lighting conditions with which we are all familiar.

In any case, the corrections for the Martian illumination are suspect. In any published final image, it is essential that the assumed illumination model be the same for the colored panels as it is for the gray. These panels are only centimeters apart and they are surely bathed identical illumination.

3. SUMMARY

Images of the color calibration chart taken on Mars for the express purpose of verifying calibration seem to be in reasonable agreement with calibration images taken on Earth under Earth-like illumination conditions. However, calibration charts shown inadvertently on production panoramic images are not compatible with those images made for the express purpose of calibration. This incompatibility is in two areas. First, the gray panel pixel values, while having the same slope in both images, have substantially different offsets. A hypothesis of variable illumination is only expected to change the slope. The offset at the darkest pixel values should always be zero. Black pixels, which are at the intercept, should not be affected by illumination. The observed offsets are preferential to the red and minimize blue. However, in addition to these unusual linear changes, there is also observed a non-linear suppression of blue reflectivity in the L6 channel on the blue color panel. The L6 channel in the mosaic panorama shows virtually no response on the blue color panel.
Color calibration charts in production MER images should either match the charts generated during calibration or should differ from them by a single uniform illumination model, expressed as overall multipliers for the red, green and blue channels.
Otherwise, production Martian images should either be made using the color chart to match Earth illumination, or should be made by trusting the luminosity calibrations made on Earth before launch.

Evaluation Report by Lockheed Martin
mars.spherix.com...

So there you go when properly calibrated so the target looks the same on Earth as on Mars...

BLUE SKIES



And I trust Lockheed Martin

[edit on 24-1-2008 by zorgon]

reply to post by zorgon


Zorgon, I think that there are two possibilities here:

1. You did not noticed that I was talking about images created with less than 3 photos from 3 different (preferably the L4, L5 and L6) channels.

2. You did noticed but tried (for some reason) shift the conversation to how to colour correct the images created with 3 photos taken with the filters for Red, Green and Blue.


If 1. is true, then I suggest you read what I was talking about when I made those posts, that there is no way of knowing the true (or even near true) colours of something when we do not have all the data.

You know that I have no problem with blue skies on Mars and the colours of the Martian rocks, I have posted some of "my" near true colour composites.

hey guys our little humanoid friend is getting alot of attention lol, the web site for the peruvian country. www.peru.com

they have put in an article about it here

peru.com...

it is in spanish they say this was discovered by "amature astronomers" lol i guess i'm an amature austronomer lol. anyhow if you understand spanish go ahead and read it kinda interesting. they also say that NASA haven't made any major comments about the object and that they simply said they image was taken with pancam filters and it was taken in Gusev Crater.......