Amazing New Mars Photos...Just Read...

reply to post by MrVertigo


There is another photo of that rock on Sol 621, this photo.

And these are those two photos in greyscale and after some tweaking to enhance the darker areas (I joined two versions of each photo, one very bright, the other normal). The images I used were the radiometrically-corrected images.


Full size


Full size

reply to post by ArMaP


Well maybe he's just hangin' out under the rock, havin' a brew and checkin' out the rims on that rover as its cruisin by...


No seriously, great work! And it does look less like a creature from the other angle and the brightness turned up. Where do you find these brighter images that you combined to make the grayscales? That's a pretty good trick if you want to enhance some detail.

reply to post by MrVertigo


I didn't found brighter images, I will explain what I did.

I went to the PDS (Planetary Data Systems) Geosciences Node site, chose the mission (MER) on the Quick Links on the left, and then the The Geosciences Node MER online data repository and then I chose the "Pancam Science Radiometrically Calibrated Image RDRs" from Spirit, here.

After choosing the "Data" directory I chose the Sols I wanted (621 and 624) and downloaded the images I wanted.

After that I used IMG2PNG, a program that converts the IMG files to PNG files.

IMG2PNG uses the radiometric correction data embedded on the IMG file to correct the photo, and it also has the possibility of increasing the brightness of the images.

I created two versions, one that looked "normal" (using the -s20 parameter of IMG2PNG) and then I created another, brighter, version (using -s50). Then I joined these two images as layers on Paint Shop Pro (but I could have done it in any other program, like Photoshop or The Gimp), the brighter image over the normal image but with only a 50% visibility, to make the normal looking image appear on the brighter areas (there were many white areas) of the brighter image. The result was what you saw.

This is what the brighter image looks like.


And this is the normal image.


[edit on 5/8/2008 by ArMaP]

reply to post by ArMaP


Thanks a lot for taking the time and taking me through this!
I'll have to keep this page for future reference.

You learn something new everyday and tonight I will sleep well.
(I still think it's a funny looking rock though
)

There is something about those pictures I don't like. I am sure they are real pictures of Mars, but they just seem to somehow be edited. They look to glossy you could say.

Check out these pics, almost looks like water to me, even has a reflective quality to it:

Water Pic one

Water Pic 2

my first reply so excuse any mistakes i've made.

[edit on 24-8-2008 by atzmaz]

[edit on 24-8-2008 by atzmaz]

reply to post by atzmaz


First of all, welcome to ATS.

Those photos are a good example of what may look like water to some people but it's not water, it's a very fine dust.

As you can see, it's not on an horizontal plane, if it was liquid it would flow down. Also, you can see that there are places where there is some accumulation of that dust in a way liquid could not accumulate.



In some photos from the microscopic camera or in some closer photos it is visible that this bluish "thing" is really dust and not liquid.

reply to post by atzmaz


As ArMaP mentions, this is not water. it is dust. hematite dust. Mars is covered in Iron, both as hematite and iron oxide.

Almost a type of parallel for the human body, with blue and red (oxygenated and oxygen free blood).

Thanks for the welcome I've been lurking for about a year and thought it was about time to participate.

I definitely agree that its not water and after looking at more pictures it becomes very apparent.

Interesting site and great pics to look at from a totally new perspective.