"Mystery" Curiosity rover image solved.

Hi all, I can remember a couple of days ago, just after Curiosity landed, there was this huge hullaboo over an image taken, in which ppl saw a factory, or something....

Now it seems as though the mystery has been solved. It was actually the dustcloud from the skycrane crashing.

Well, NASA has solved the mystery. The weird blob in Curiosity's first photos was actually the huge dust cloud kicked up by the sky crane descent stage that delivered the rover to the Red Planet.

www.space.com...

It was a Chinese lantern hovering in swamp gas.

It does not matter what we think or see becasue they can always explain it away.

Originally posted by knowledgedesired
It was a Chinese lantern hovering in swamp gas.

It does not matter what we think or see becasue they can always explain it away.

EH? What is more likely a disturbance on the horizon due to parts of a craft crashing around the area OR a martian factory.

I mean even it WAS a martian factory the fact that parts of the landing craft were strewn around the place would make anyone be very careful about jumping to conclusions. Wait for the dust to settle, take closer pictures etc etc. I mean DUH! basic stuff even if there is a martian car factory there

Thanks for the post. In some cases you see what you want to see and in the case with the anomaly from the Curiosity image some saw a building.

Millions and millions of things can influence our perception of an image. In this case, some were chasing rainbows.

Originally posted by MDDoxs
Thanks for the post. In some cases you see what you want to see and in the case with the anomaly from the Curiosity image some saw a building.

Millions and millions of things can influence our perception of an image. In this case, some were chasing rainbows.

One of the things that would influence yor perception would have been that it was an extremely low-res image, and was "blocky" (pixelated). Therefore, it looked like an object with smooth edges and sharp corners, when really it was the pixels that were smooth and sharp.

Originally posted by knowledgedesired
It was a Chinese lantern hovering in swamp gas.

It does not matter what we think or see becasue they can always explain it away.

So no matter the evidence to the contrary, It sounds as if you would just dismiss it with a wave of your hand by saying "but NASA can say what they want"...

Wow! -- How much more closed-minded could you get? It sounds to me you are going to think whatever you want to think, no matter what evidence is presented to you.

The evidence that this was the dust plume of the sky-crane is quite clear:

1. The anomaly was in the direction of the crashed sky-crane.
2. The timing was consistent with the crash of the sky-crane.
3. It was in the early pictures taken seconds after landing, but not in the pictures taken sometime later.

I suppose you could respond to point No. 3 by just saying "it didn't show up in later images because NASA 'photoshopped' it out." However, that begs the question: why did they "photoshop" it out of one image but not the other image?

I hope one day the Skycrane takes its rightful place in a museum. Poor little guy, does its job - the first time anything like this is attempted even - and then is sent off to crash.