I’m running out of Spirit puns, but that rover just keeps lasting!
The Spirit Mars rover just achieved its 1000th martian day on the fourth rock, and to commemorate it NASA released a pretty cool panorama:
It’s pretty cool, but not nearly as spiffy as this anaglyph:
What? You don’t have red/green glasses handy? Why not? There are a zillion of these anaglyphs on the web, so I keep a pair on my desk at work.
Yes, I’m a dork. Sue me.
Anyway, go get a pair. The hill in the near foreground with the rocks on it is so cool when see standing out against the farther hills. It reminds me a little of a place I recently visited.
Oh– Spirit and Opportunity were only meant to last 90 martian days. 1000 days and counting.
October 25th, 2006 at 5:47 pm
Isn’t that Red / BLUE glasses, not red/green. I believe you use red/green up in Canada at the Possum Lodge.
October 25th, 2006 at 6:26 pm
Why are there large rectangular blocks of pixels in the sky of that image that are one solid color? It looks like someone has gone over the image and replaced the sky. One simply cannot get large rectangular blocks like that using a digital camera.
I downloaded the image and went to work on it with Microsoft Paint, using the flood fill feature. With any other picture taken by a digital camera, only a few adjacent pixels will have a common color. Never will one see large rectangular blocks all one color, but that’s exactly the result I got with flood fill. For instance, the rectangle from (560,0) to (575,30) is one solid color.
I challenge anyone to take a picture of Earth’s sky with a digital camera and see if they can find a single 16 by 31 block that is one solid color. Quantum mechanical effects will prevent such things from ever happening; at most you will see a small clump of pixels, three or four or maybe a dozen in a block that have the same color, never 500 adjacent pixels all with the same color.
The block I mentioned above is not the only example of rectangles in the sky in that picture. For instance, (832,0) to (919,31) is a series of 22 vertical stripes, each 31 to 32 pixels tall, ranging from two to 11 pixels wide. Real digital photographs do not look like that. The image of the sky has been altered.
October 25th, 2006 at 6:28 pm
Also, does Raleigh scattering not work on Mars? … or are the laws of physics somehow different over there…?
October 25th, 2006 at 6:32 pm
I don’t see any rectangles in the sky…?
October 25th, 2006 at 6:34 pm
Guess it’s a sound stage. Dammit. Fooled again by NASA.
The images are .jpg images and are compressed. This is a compression artifact you most likely seeing. The orginal images are probably not in compressed format and will have the color consistency you are looking for.
I challenge you to take a digital picture of earth’s sky, convert it to a .jpg and NOT find artifacts like you are seeing in the above pictures.
But what do I know… I’m probably just hired by the big wigs at NASA and the Gubmint who are covering up everything.
Maybe they converted these photos to .jpg to hide imperfections in the orginal that would’ve given it away! That way people like me can come and say, oh it’s a compression artifact, and blind the people from seeing the Truth of the Conspiracy.
That is where Ed was going with this, right?
October 25th, 2006 at 6:42 pm
It was totally awesome when the landers first made it to Mars, and it’s totally awesome they are still toolin’ around!
October 25th, 2006 at 6:43 pm
This looks like a surviellance photo taken in Iraq!..Nice work on the photo..I must add that it is surpising that NASA spends billions of dollars on this mission, but uses Microsoft Paint to compile the data.
October 25th, 2006 at 6:54 pm
Shawn, my camera takes pictures in JPG format. I did indeed try just as you said (with a picture I took of a shuttle launch), and although there are clumps, they are irregular in shape and not rectangular, they are not all 31 pixels tall, and they have at most a couple of dozen proximal pixels not 500. Most of the clumps that I found in my photo are no more than ten pixels.
There are no large rectangular blocks like that in the image of the martian terrain. Neither are there large unicolor blocks like that on the visible parts of the rover.
You don’t need to believe me. Download the image and try it for yourself. Then do the same for one of your own photos and see if you can find a single large rectangular clump.
I am not calling this some vast conspiracy as you suggest. I am saying that the image has been altered. It only takes one jerk who thinks he’s funny to do that.
October 25th, 2006 at 7:31 pm
Cool views of the Red planet. And hilly as well! Give a nice variety to the images.
I don’t care what the song says; Mars is a great place. Just add water!
Ed Minchau
Well of course that image of Mars is altered; its a panorama!
It was put together from many photos into the form as seen.
And if I’m not mistaken, it’s also three grayscale photos combined to form one of color, right?
I’m not aware of ANY NASA images from a spacecraft that HASN’T been altered. They all must be processed in many ways.
I bet the BA knows all about that, right?
October 25th, 2006 at 7:32 pm
Did you try it on the full-sized jpeg (http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA01907.jpg)? Or maybe the tiff (http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/tiff/PIA01907.tif)? If the problem exists there, I’d be more suspicious.
October 25th, 2006 at 7:35 pm
Also, this panorama was taking over a period of four months. Four whole months from the first part of this panorama to the last. Presumably some photoediting was needed to make it look like a single panorama.
October 25th, 2006 at 8:20 pm
Ed, I certainly meant no disrespect if you were only wondering about the photo artifacting and what causes it. That type of analysis of NASA photos and other photos (WTC bombing) is usually the prelude to a conspiracy theory in my experience. Digital artifacts are also the reason folks like Hoagland think there are cities on Mars.
Randall seems to have the real answer as to why there is artifacting in the photos.
Also, while the digital camera takes photos in .jpg format they may take them in higher resolution with less loss. The ones above are probably compressed more than the ones in your camera. Try taking a high resolution photo in .jpg and then using photoshop to lower the image size (from 3700×4700 to 800×600 for example) and get the size of the file below 100k. Then you’ll see a lot more of those contiguous squares of color in the sky.
It’s an interesting discussion either way. Thanks for the photo links, Randall.
October 25th, 2006 at 9:13 pm
Ed,
Do you mean “Rayleigh” scattering? If so, then you’ll need to spell out what you mean by saying that it’s not evident in the Mars photos.
October 25th, 2006 at 9:44 pm
Hey Ed,
I think the rectangular blocks in the sky, and the blury halo on the horizon are caused by NASA Smoothing the sky. Because over the broad time period it took to aquire the images, any dust in the sky would change, and cause image seams. They said they are trying to mimic the vista of what a person would see, and a person would not see seams in the sky. We dont see these in the Raw images, so they cant be caused by the compression of the images onboard Spirit.
October 25th, 2006 at 9:59 pm
Mark, yes, I spelled it wrong. Why isn’t the sky on Mars blue?
October 25th, 2006 at 10:08 pm
I opened that .tif file with Photoshop (it was 350meg!) and the detals are amazing! I found the splice points that were giving such a puzzle in the compressed, small version of the file. They are really obvious at the parts where the rover is in the picture.
Anyway, all that aside I was just looking closely at details of rocks and terrain and dirt and just… damn, I felt like a little kid again. I wish I could be up there looking around in person.
I’m an atheist and photos like these and my studies of microorganisms give me that great feeling that some people describe as spiritual. I love feeling that wonder and awe at the universe that photos like these evoke. It makes me happy to exist.
Thanks for the post, Phil.
October 25th, 2006 at 10:14 pm
“The image of the sky has been altered.”
Yes. The entire image has been altered. Each individual image in the mosaic will have had its gain and bias tinkered with for uniformity. Multiple spectral filters are used for each area, and the levels for each of those are adjusted. Overlapping sections are stitched together. While the photos were taken at approximately the same local time, azimuthal sun angle will have altered shadows somewhat. Some areas, like the sky, may be averaged. Any clouds or transient events like dust devils will have been deleted (although JPL’s press release indicates these are rare in winter.) Mapping the spherical field onto the cylindrical (flat) image geometrically distorts anything above or below the horizon.
Far more image processing goes on than a simplistic “looks like someone has gone over the image and replaced the sky.”
– Timothy Reed
MER Pancam Team
HiRISE Optical Integration Team
October 26th, 2006 at 12:05 am
Just had to add this:
Mars Rover Beginning to Hate Mars
(from The Onion, of course)
October 26th, 2006 at 4:40 am
Ed, the atmosphere on Mars is completely different from that on Earth, so why would you expect the same colour?
October 26th, 2006 at 5:29 am
“Why isn’t the sky on Mars blue? ”
Because it has a different composition than Earth’s atmosphere.
October 26th, 2006 at 5:36 am
My 3d glasses came from a Fruit by the Foot box. I love ‘em.
did
October 26th, 2006 at 6:13 am
Ed, how old are you? I remember clearly when Vikings 1 & 2 landed upon Mars in the ’70s. Pictures starting rolling in. At first the sky appeared a familiar blue. That was before anyone had a chance to calibrate the color balances of the images against the color chart included on the landers’ topsides.
Upon calibration, the sky turned pink. Why is the sky in the neighborhood of pink or red? Well, why is the whole planet roughly that color? It’s covered with dust that has a lot of iron in it. The Martian atmosphere has a great deal of this dust suspended in it. Mars is famous for its weather.
But even if you didn’t know this, why would you expect the sky to be the same color as on Earth? Mars’ atmosphere has been known for decades to have a lower pressure, and different abundances of gases.
October 26th, 2006 at 6:29 am
[...] “Spirit of Longevity“, no Bad Astronomy. Os 1000 dias marcianos do MER Spirit. Também sobre o mesmo tema, “1.000 Sols“, no Tom’s Astronomy Blog; “Transit of Mercury“, no Astroprof’s Page. Ainda o trânsito de Mercúrio no dia 8 de Novembro, que não será visÃvel em Portugal; [...]
October 26th, 2006 at 9:25 am
Hmm, my post from early this morning got eaten by the spam filter…
I feel the same way, though I don’t know that it’s because I’m an atheist. I look at these photos and see landscapes and rocks that look familiar to our own world yet are millions of miles away. It just drives home to me how connected everything in the universe is – and we made something that’s cruising around on another planet! (Perhaps that solidifies my worldview, after all.)
I love looking at the “Slide Show: Road Trip” pictures on the NASA page (middle right sidebar). Close-ups of rocks, how awesome. Somebody said to me, “Why are we studying rocks on another planet…we could spend the money…” blah, blah. I replied that we’re trying to figure out where the rocks in his head came from. Really, I can’t understand how people fail to feel excited looking at these photos – doesn’t it at least fuel their imagination?
Side note: I can’t wait to see the results of the STEREO mission. Looking at solar storms in 3-D…woo-hoo! I gotta get me some glasses. (-8~
Links:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mer
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stereo/main/index.html
October 26th, 2006 at 10:31 am
“Upon calibration, the sky turned pink.”
This would be the same calibration that turned the Stars and Stripes on Viking purple and orange?
“But even if you didn’t know this, why would you expect the sky to be the same color as on Earth? Mars’ atmosphere has been known for decades to have a lower pressure, and different abundances of gases.”
The sky should be blue on Mars for the same reason that the sky is blue on Earth – Rayleigh scattering of the same light source. The chemical composition of the sky should not matter unless there is a gas with an intrinsic color present.
October 26th, 2006 at 11:28 am
Martian Colors.
http://www.donaldedavis.com/PARTS/MARSCLRS.html
Quoting from the second page:
“The blue seen here is probably more camera induced than real. On Mars the ‘Raleigh scattering’ which colors our sky blue is greatly diminished by the low atmospheric pressure”
More:
What Color is Mars?
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/hoagland/mars_colors.html
What Color is the Martian Sky?
http://webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/14C.html
October 26th, 2006 at 12:00 pm
Ed Minchau Says:
“This would be the same calibration that turned the Stars and Stripes on Viking purple and orange?â€
It was when a technician noticed the off-coloring of the flag that everyone realised that correction was necessary. I remember that very vividly.
But let’s say, hypothetically, that in some inexplicable way, calibrating to the flag throws the color-balance way off for images of the calibration stripe. Similarly, adjusting to the stripe throws the flag’s colors way off. Which one do you go with? You can’t go with both, since they’re inconsistent with each other. It can at least be said that the calibration stripe was designed explicitly for the purpose of color-correcting images. The pigments in the flag were probably chosen on a much more casual basis than those in the calibration stripe. I’d rather go with the stripe than the flag.
“The sky should be blue on Mars for the same reason that the sky is blue on Earth – Rayleigh scattering of the same light source. The chemical composition of the sky should not matter unless there is a gas with an intrinsic color present.â€
Rayleigh scattering is dependent upon several variables. Sunlight isn’t the sole player. Similarly, Rayleigh scattering per se isn’t the sole mode by which light is scattered. Rayleigh scattering is dominant for wavelengths at least an order of magnitude larger than the particles in the scattering medium. For particles larger than that, the dominant mechanism is Mie scattering. On top of that, there’s a mode called Raman scattering.
October 27th, 2006 at 2:29 pm
Regarding glasses for viewing the anaglyph, the BA says, “go get a pair.” But where can “a pair” be obtained at a reasonable price? The only sources I have found are for expensive glasses in frames or for quantity orders of the cardboard kind. The problem with this sort of ‘product’ is that it is so nearly worthless that there is no profit in selling it. Those owned by most folks who do have some were obtained as free handouts. I had some once, but I can no longer find them.
October 27th, 2006 at 5:30 pm
@David Vanderschel
Google is your friend. The first choice will send you paper ones for free. The nicer ones have a minimum order of 2 @ $7.00 apiece, which isn’t bad. http://www.rainbowsymphony.com/freestuff.html