Evidence that NASA is altering the true colours of the pictures of Mars

To achieve good approximation to true color photos, it is not enough to just take the L4, L5, and L6 filters and merge the images. L4 is not even red, it's yellow-orange! L3 filter is pure red. L5 is not a pure green color and L6 not a pure blue color. They are not additive.

The only way to do this properly is to use all the 6 (or even 4 or 5) filters which are the calibrated spectral power distribution information. Then do some kind of interpolation on these 6 data to make a curve over them to give us a good guess of what the other wavelengths are.

The curve is then converted to the XYZ color space then to RGB color space which will give us the correct colors to what we are seeing as if we are right there on Mars.

I am currently working on a software which will merge the filtered images using math formulas.

I don't know if anyone mentioned this, but I am quite experienced with photoshop and the beauty of the program is understood when you understand the layer system.

I can have the base image, copy it on top of itself. Switch to the bottom layer and color it using any color, at any transparency or even light gradient to give things a glow, be it soft or harsh like light. I can then move to the top layer and erase the areas from the photo I want manipulated and the bottom layer peeks through. I could then then color manipulate this and achieve areas of multi-color toned objects. The ground could have more blue and green saturation I could even make the sky appear to be in the midst of a sunset even though it would be a blue sky.

So what we have here is either real and you guys are probing too far into it. Or it is an amateurish, terrible GIMP (which I'm sorry is far less flexible and user friendly than Adobe PS, although capable of the same things it is harder and more time consuming with GIMP which makes it endlessly annoying) or some other terrible image manipulation program. Adobe's premium PS is like 600 dollars I think, so if they wanted to really be professional about it they could.

The last and final option is that the NASA department + Gov't feels the populace is so stupid that less than 1% of people would understand the intricacies of photo manipulation with something other than MSPAINT. I'd have to agree with the Gov't here. Most people, since they have no experience will make up all kinds of wild claims in order to sound justified even though the party making these claims could not even come close to what a professional is capable of or even someone who is familiar with the program.

I feel the people grabbing at straws in this thread have a amateurish rationalization with photo manip. and that they are teenagers or young adults or older with limited photo manipulation skills. This is not an insult, but photo manip. can go much farther than RGB color coating. There are pictures out there done by professionals and for recreational purposes that have 100 layers with different intricacies of man hours per layer for a single picture. I know, because I have put in a fraction of that for my own enjoyment and I am not even a graphic artist, though I often consider it.

reply to post by RFBurns


Thanks for your reply FFBurns I" agree with your assumptions totaly and I do not doubt that we will see alot more of these coloured pictures in the near future. I also agree that we as a society are alot more sophisticated these days and NASA (government) are still in fear of the social experiment of H G Wells War of the World radio broadcast. Though I would assume that people of this era are far more likely to accept that there is water on Mars which supported some form of biological life as NASA has been hinting towards bacterial life and I would not be suprised if the green we sometimes see in these NASA images of Mars, scattered on rocks and surrounding glaciers are soon to be discovered are in fact algae.
As to the further endeavours of India and China in this new Space Race let us see if we can have a broader release of information into scientific research and space exploration.
Though I suspect it may be neccessary to have a person such as Sir Richard Branson and competitors to continue with there privatisation of space before this happens.

Originally posted by dave420
reply to post by fatdad

 

There is so much wrong with that post I don't know where to start. Sheesh.

please explain this comment .

question is, where in mars are these pictures taken....i mean we could take desert pictures from earth too.....make it look like there's no life or no buildings or whatever hehe...just go to grand canyon or a desert in mid east and take some photos and say this is it....

Go to the original post and click on "Source 2". Here's the link (it's NASA's website): Source 2.

Scroll to where it talks about the sundials; the heading is called "Sundial Lands on Mars". You will see there that:


"The sundial is embellished with artwork from children..."

Does everybody knows why there's so much manipulation going on in terms of space exploration, findings, alien life etc..?
NASA and all space agencies, and other agencies and us - the humble citizen of this earth DO knows that there's life in another planets, and in another galaxies as well. There's nothing to argue about that!
No bright mind can denied the existence of other life form in another star system..
..
But the fact that Our Beloved Earth is totally and absolutely controlled by the Superior Religious Order - and in this case, any discoveries, finding or result of space exploration will be considered as "A SUBJECT" for studies ONLY! and not a confirmation of anything else....
..
Because, The Religious Organization will not tolerate or allowed anything that will destroy the foundation of their faith. Which is? That this planet is the only planet blessed by GOD to have life - and nothing outside of our planet will exist another life form - such as Beings, or Human Beings etc...
..
The impact and effect to the masses will be too much if the Scientific community will see and find out that there are alien life out there.
..
Cheers!

Have any of you considered the fact that all these things being discussed are to a certain extent true? The reason for the cover up is the fact that NASA wants to keep the true nature of Mars out of the public eye to protect the real Mars until they can complete the program to get us there, and not the Asian, Eastern and other, countries from going there and discovering the habitability and the past history of civilization of Mars, that they have already discovered.

Retired NASA Engineer.

Whilst it's good fun trying to debunk NASA's official line, how do you explain that Mars looks Red when viewed through a large telescope at opposition without any filtration?

The first thing I will say is that I am not trying to make fun or belittle what you are claiming. Is there really a likelihood that NASA is fooling people about Mars? Is there real evidence of it, or is this just something for entertainment purposes?nort

Over the years, I have seen photos purportedly from the surface of Mars that to me looked like they showed some form of plant life. I do think that NASA, JPL etc have purposely altered the colors of their released photos and edited them in other ways.

Look, NASA/JPL are very tightly controlled entities that release whatever they want and keep secret anything that might be sensational. We get only what they want us to have and nothing more.

Are they keeping secrets? Hell yeah. The government knows one hell of a lot that they are keeping close to the vest. That's what ATS is all about... trying to suss out what we can from circumstantial evidence, intelligent guesses and intuition. Are the Mars photos altered... yep... is there a mystery about what was found on the moon and why Neil Armstrong has kept his lips zipped about the moon... yep, I think so. Man oh man, if we only knew what the powers that be know. Wow.

Originally posted by spitefulgod
I don't see any evidence of colour tampering, I can see white and red, if th atmosphere has a red tint then the majority of the image ill be red, same when you go into a nightclub and th lights are blue or yellow you only see blue or yellow. I don't get what you are trying to prove, go look in a telescope you can see for yourself the planet it red.

Look at the blue (bottom right) pancam calibration colour swatch on the close up pictures taken on Mars. Now look at the same colour swatch on the panoramic view...it's Magenta. In other words the colours have been doctored. They have turned blue to magenta. There is further evidence with the blue tape on the cables which has magically changed colour!!!!!!!!

Now we will get claims of ah but the filter used creates a distortion in the colour...blah blah blah. This can be knocked on the head by checking on which filters have been used.

I raised this point a couple of years ago with those very same pictures which are so bleedin obvious evidence of doctoring that it beggers belief it has continued. But of course reputations are at stake. Mars is red the sky is red not blue etc etc. Then there is the even greater problem. If the Mars pictures have been doctored what does this say about the Moon....oops.

There are 2 kinds of calibration types useful for scientific analysis:
A) absolute calibration
B) relative calibration to a normalised daylight light source

For both you need first a calibrated camera on Earth before putting it on a spacecraft.
The camera takes a picture of a normalized color and grey chart in daylight conditions, that means either in noon sunlight under a cloudless sky or under a Xenon lamp with a 6500K whitepoint. Then you adjust the gradation curve for each color channel inside the camera electronics or its AD converter to create a digital images showing the very same normalized colors known for the color chart. That means white is white, black is black and the colors are also perfect. After that process you are not allowed to change anything on the camera. After the space probe sterilisation process, or a test heating for that, you check if the camera gets degraded by it to be sure it works as expected.

Now you have a absolute calibrated camera, as you know the light output energy of your xenon lamp and the reflection spectrum of the color chart.

If you take this camera to Mars you can create images with type absolute calibration without any calculation, just display the digital image data on a calibrated monitor. The image will show, how a human would see the surface shortly after the landing. I write shortly, as the human visual system would adapt to any changes in the ambient light after some hours. If the ambient light was really red, you wouldn't see that anymore after a day, as your visual system would expect a blue sky with white clouds. However, the absolute calibrated camera cannot be deceived, it does show the precise colors every picture. Geologist and other scientists do not need that absolute calibration as they are interested in the relative calibration.

The relative calibration to a normalised daylight source is of interest for scientists as it shows the soil and rocks of Mars like they woul look like if taken to Earth and looked under daylight or a normalised xenon daylight lamp. With that type of calibration they can identify different types of minerals.

To get relative calibrated images you need to photograph the very same color chart you had on Earth next to the Martian objects. Then you adjust each color channel on the digital images so the color charts looks the same as the one on Earth under daylight.

Now the questions are easy to get true color Martian pictures:

1. We need the raw images, aperture data, shutter speed of the test images taken by the Rover camera on Earth of the color calibration target (sundial) on the Mars Rovers under normalised lighting conditions (6500K lamp). I haven't found these images yet on the PDS image database.

2. We need a statement, that after those test images nothing was changed on the Rover camera electronics or AD conversion process. Also any influence of the heat sterilisation process must be excluded.

3. We need images taken by a reference camera the very same time, the test images of the Rover camera were taken. This is needed to exluded any calculation errors and to verify the test images. These test images are really important as even slight calculation errors can lead to large color distortions. I haven't seen any images of this type. However, I know that they have been taken as it was part of the calibration process in one laboratory.

4. We need spectral reflectance values of the color charts to verify the test images again, this time by calculation. This data is available.


To get an answer for the 1st question I already tried some addresses but always was directed to other persons and then again to others. No one seems to know how to get them. The people at the PDS database want the image numbers, the people at the research institutations do have some image data but no auxilary data about the light source, the shutter speed, aperture and others.

This thread reminded me of one that was posted about four years ago titled: EXCLUSIVE: NASA Is Not Altering Mars Colors. I'm not sure if it has been posted in this thread, as I haven't gone through all 12 pages yet.

As far as I know. There are no true colour photos of Mars. Just approximately true colour photos. A lot of the images taken by the rovers are in various levels of infra red and ultra violet. So that makes it hard to get a perfectly accurate true colour image that way.

What would be the point of NASA purposely altering the colours? What would they gain from doing that? It seems pretty silly.

Also here's an interesting site about Martian colors

because of the composition of the martian atmosphere and the distance from the sun, colors will appear differently on mars than on earth. your image correction did away with the lower light levels and the color caused by the atmosphere. you substituted earth colors, not corrected to the true colors

reply to post by jra

This thread reminded me of one that was posted about four years ago titled: EXCLUSIVE: NASA Is Not Altering Mars Colors. I'm not sure if it has been posted in this thread, as I haven't gone through all 12 pages yet.

Yes, it has been posted in here. The problem is that it only explain the reason for bright pink on the blue block on the color calibration target. It doesn't explain the mechanics of translating the filter colors into good approximation of true colors.

As far as I know. There are no true colour photos of Mars. Just approximately true colour photos. A lot of the images taken by the rovers are in various levels of infra red and ultra violet. So that makes it hard to get a perfectly accurate true colour image that way.

Yes, which is quite odd. Many images with specific filters are missing. All 6 (or even 5) filters are needed in order to make a good approximation of spectral power distribution with some kind of interpolation (they use third-order polynomial interpolation).

What would be the point of NASA purposely altering the colours? What would they gain from doing that? It seems pretty silly.

That's the purpose of this thread. Remember this is a conspiracy site. What is the purpose of oversaturating the pictures with red hue? That's what we want to know.

Also here's an interesting site about Martian colors

Thanks for the link! I bookmarked it. I got really interested in this since this thread started. I have been studying this and am in the process of completing a software that will merge the images using math formulas. I want to understand and see the results and see if the colors match what they show on NASA website.

Originally posted by Deaf Alien

Yes, it has been posted in here. The problem is that it only explain the reason for bright pink on the blue block on the color calibration target. It doesn't explain the mechanics of translating the filter colors into good approximation of true colors.

It actually explains quite a bit more than only the effects caused by different filters.

It also explains why we have difficulty with the raw channels. Read the section on the normalization of brightness for each channel. It may be of some help in your project.

reply to post by RFBurns

I fine your posts about color balance to be fascinating but couldn't help but wonder, and IDK if someone else hasn't posted this yet as I haven't read the entire thread yet...
But what if the part of the arm that was white just after manufacture, after being on mars for a while isn't truly white anymore IRL??I mean if I buy shoes that have some white in them and then wear them they don't stay exactly white for very long. And then there's the matter of the martian dust being very powdery fine and possibly magnetic.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

This thread supposedly debunks the threadstarters claims, but no one seems to have to taken much interest in it. What are everyone's thoughts on this thread?

i just wrote an e-mail requesting info about the color pictures after all these years. i sent it to the address listed at ASU and i'll post a reply when/and if i get one. today is dec.14 2008 4:40pm pacific time.