Ok, all of you in this thread are right, NASA photos are good, my photos are sh*t, enjoy reddish flat skies, I'll not reply to any other post in this thread (you already decided you are right, this thread is no more useful to anybody).
Over.
Established Member
Ok, all of you in this thread are right, NASA photos are good, my photos are sh*t, enjoy reddish flat skies, I'll not reply to any other post in this thread (you already decided you are right, this thread is no more useful to anybody).
Over.
Established Member
Ok, this is the real color of Mars sky, you all wrong.
Enjoy it.
It also shows the UFO NASA was trying to hide, can you see them?... :roll:
:-?
P.S.
I obtained this just filling the sky in PhotoImpact6 using similarity 10 for "Fill" tool.
Member
I understand your concern. Yes, every pixel in the sky of that picture is the same identical color. Yes, thats probably not a true representiation of the sky on Mars. I apologize if I missed the point of your original posts.
If I had to guess why they would do something like this, it is beacuse of the point I brought up earlier, which is that this is an enhanced color image. I'm betting when they enhanced the colors, the sky came out a bright blue (from the enhancement).
Rather than have people take that image, and post it online without reference to the fact that its false color, and say "See, mars really does have bright blue skies", they choose to replace the enhanced sky with the color of the real sky (yes, by obivous painting).
Or...what we are seeing is an artifact of the contrast stretching and subsequent clipping. As I said above, it is necessary to scale the images, though that scaling does create its own artifacts. The original animation you posted, with the bleeding of bright colors onto the dark terrain, exemplifies this well.
If you did the scaling as I described above, to an L7 frame, you'd end up with a blue value of no greater than the highest end of your newly scaled image. If the scaling factor were 2 or 3, that means you could only have an L7 brightness of maximum 85-128. If you created a color composite from that image, you would have twice to three times as much red in the sky than blue. But is that accurate?
The original animation you posted shows what happens when the sky maxes out the pixels. They can't go higher than 255, so they just fill the entire sky with 'max brightness'. If you left the ccd exposing twice as longthat, you'd end up with twice the brightness of the foreground and no increase in brightness in the sky, it'd just stay 255.
Now lets say you scale it back, is it fair to say that the sky's brightness no more than your 'scaled max brightness?' Just because your scaling says everything is twice as bright as it should be, it would be easy to just take the image, cut the brightness in half and go forward. But what happens when the sky should have been accumulating brightness the whole time, but was clipped to the maximum brightness before the image exposure ended? This is the nature of the clipping that has to occur. The most 'accurate' scaling doesn't tell you anything about the brightest features in the image, since they maxed out and weren't continuing to grow in value as the exposure lengthened.
Calibrating properly for sky images is amazingly difficult, especially when the camera is designed to calibrate brightness for medium bright objects, such as IMP for pathfinder and all the cameras on the MER rovers. If you have an interest in learning about the about the sky colors, I'd point you towards this image and the paper it references. It explains the pitfalls and difficulty of imaging the sky to proper contrast and color.
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01547
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Hmmm... My guess for why the sky is mostly the same intensity is that the sky is quite uniform in intensity to the CCD imager in relation to the rest of the image. This means that it will cover a limited number of levels in the raw data from the CCD ADC(analog to digital converter). The sky is often the most intense feature in the images, so it will have the highest levels in the grayscale. Now, the problem is that the original image is in a 12 bit grayscale format, but the usual formats used on the internet can only use 8 bits of grayscale, this means you have to convert from 4096 different shades of gray to 256, so you will loose some information in the conversion. This is especially noticeable on the areas that have rather similar color intensity.
There are a few approaches to conversion of this type, using a linear conversion, you may map the lowest 16 levels(0-15) of the original to level 0 in the web image, then the next 16(16-31) to level 1, and so on. This creates an image that has the most correct distribution of the levels, but you will lose details. But my guess is that NASA uses a non-linear conversion that compress the high intensity areas to fewer levels, so that the detail of the midranges is improved. This would give you a uniform high intensity on the sky, but the quality of the ground features would be higher than in a linear conversion. This conversion is probably done automagicaly by some software that tries to pick the best conversion strategy for the interesting features, the rocks on the ground...
As for JPEG artifacts, you don't get them on uniform areas, as a large area of the same intensity is quite easy to compress with little or no loss...
Member
Jumpjack,
People might take your concerns a bit more seriously if they didn't include thinly veiled (or outright) accusations of fraud.
There are a lot of possibilities for what you see in these images. Fakery is not necessarily the most likely of them.
Order of Kilopi
So, now, your NASA hoax isn't that an image labeled "enhanced false-color" is the wrong color. It isn't that NASA removed JPEG artifacts from the sky in that image.Originally Posted by jumpjack
Your NASA hoax is that NASA exactly left unretouched a UFO in the sky, while they were busy retouching everything else.
I am in awe.
Established Member
It was an ironic post... :roll:So, now, your NASA hoax isn't that an image labeled "enhanced false-color" is the wrong color. It isn't that NASA removed JPEG artifacts from the sky in that image.
Your NASA hoax is that NASA exactly left unretouched a UFO in the sky, while they were busy retouching everything else.
I am in awe.
Member
Maybe you could clarify your reasons for starting this thread. Is the title of the thread ("NASA hoax: why?") also meant to be "ironic"? If so, I think it would be a good idea to back off the irony a bit. It doesn't seem to be coming across as such. I think all of the egative comments you're geting are possibly due to those of us who might have mistakely thought you were seriously asserting that these touch-ups were NASA hoaxes.
Assuming an ironic use of the word "hoax": I guess I agree that NASA maybe ought to be completely open about if and how (and why) they make dramatic changes to their photos. Blocking off whole areas and painting them a particular color is a bit questionable, IMO. If there's a good reason for doing this, they ought to be clear about it.
If anything, they ought to be aware of the fact that many of those who download their images pay scrupulously close attention to them. These should not be treated as posters for grade-school classes, but as serious scientific documents. If the sky looks crappy, IOW, too bad. They ought to leave it that way or mark the photo "false color AND partial artist's interpretation".
Established Member
The colors of Mars are, to a large extent, meaningless. The cameras on the rovers are not color cameras. Their purpose is to try and determine what the rocks are made of, and not what color they are. When NASA publishes a color picture, it is more or less "eye candy" for those looking at them. This matter has been discussed over and over in this forum, and has been beaten to death. The bottom line is this...NASA is not hiding anything! Give one good reason why they would.
Established Member
Because releasing a retouched photo without saying it has been retouched is a hoax, IMHO. It is retouched, not just enhanced: the photo below is retouched or enhanced?...
An image like this has the same (scientific) value of an image like this: :^o
I can't see any difference between the two images: in both cases the sky is a nonsense.
Not at all!Is the title of the thread also meant to be "ironic"?
This exactly summarizes my opinion. Thanks for expressing it for me, I am not so comfortable with complex english speech.[...]
I guess I agree that NASA maybe ought to be completely open about if and how (and why) they make dramatic changes to their photos. Blocking off whole areas and painting them a particular color is a bit questionable, IMO. If there's a good reason for doing this, they ought to be clear about it.
If anything, they ought to be aware of the fact that many of those who download their images pay scrupulously close attention to them. These should not be treated as posters for grade-school classes, but as serious scientific documents. If the sky looks crappy, IOW, too bad. They ought to leave it that way or mark the photo "false color AND partial artist's interpretation".
Member
Well, I guess I'm still more of the "artist's interpretation" way of thinking. Even so, I'm not fully convinced that this is an intentional outcome of the signal processing.
But maybe you should write to NASA and point out how much this bothers you. A tip though: don't use the words "hoax" or "faked"!
Established Member
Why should they read my letter among a couple of million of others?... :roll:
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As I suggested in my post a little earlier in the thread(Posted: Wed 12.05.2004), I think the reason(in addition to the small range of grayscale levels the bright sky is likely to have in the original image) for the uniform sky is a result of the conversion process used to make 8 bit grayscales suitable for posting on the internet, you web browser could not display the special 12 bit format it is in originally. And since you are going to loose information no matter what you do, it is logical to sacrifice the least important ranges of the grayscale, so that one get better results in the details(the rocky ground). The sky is unlikely to be painted(in the sense of someone or some program tracing the sky outline and filling it in with a solid intensity), it is more likely to be caused by the processing done by the converter software.
As for stating the reason for every thing that can be interpreted as an anomaly, lets just say that NASA could have published a detailed explanation of the entire sequence of every thing the rover can do, with full sources to their software, and people would still post about things like this.
Anyway, it is inevitable, that if NASA doesn't say something, it is seen by some as a cover-up or something and call for more information, if NASA do comment, the conspiracists say it is disinformation.
Order of Kilopi
JumpJack, watch your tone and language. This is your only warning.
Established Member
Real or not, I like the red Martian sky. Blue sky I can have anytime (if these clouds ever clear out). I'm a taxpayer and I want the red sky, Mr. NASA color faker dude.
Established Member
I think you'll find these are labelled 'Press Images' for a reason. It would be totally pointless to release serious scientific data on the internet as jpegs are you would lose all sorts of details. The Mars Rover website is simply there to keep people updated and generate publicity. The majority of people who use the site want nice pretty pictures of mars. The scientific data will be released and available for download once they've sifted through it and organised it into the PDS.
You've kinda shot yourself in the foot there. The raw images you've used (L2, L5 and L7 filters) aren't going to give you accurate colour images. You really can't use them as a basis for the martian sky being blue. Not to mention the fact that you don't have any calibration data to accurately process and balance those raw images.
There's another simple explanation for the lack of noisy pixels in the press release sky and it shows exactly why your quote "Because if you build an image from low-res or noisy images, I suppose you'll obtain a low-res or noisy image! But, in the NASA color image the noise magically disappears, and the sky is perfectly flat!" is wrong.Because releasing a retouched photo without saying it has been retouched is a hoax, IMHO. It is retouched, not just enhanced: the photo below is retouched or enhanced?...
Take a look around the mars forums for threads related to the imaging methods used by the rovers. Many of us have explained about how it 'stretches' contrast on each colour channel to maximise the detail.
Here's an example:
In the image above I've taken a piece of sky and shown the intensity of various pixels from the image. Generally the shading looks smooth because most pixels are the same intensity. The brightest pixel on there is 192 whilst the darkest is 168
In the bottom half of the image is the same greyscale block but i've taken it into my own processing software and stretched the image. The brightest is 255 whilst the darkest is 0. This stretching increases the contrast between the pixels noticably.
The raw image you've shown is stretched. Therefore it has a lot more contrast than the final image will have. JPL accounts for colour stretching when they build their press images, and I would bet they run all kinds of algorithms and filters to clean them up. Things such as relatively small contrasts between pixels are going to be removed and the colour will be averaged out over them.
Not to mention your whole hoax theory is flawed in that JPL have posted the original pictures freely on their page. What is the point in them going to the trouble of doctoring their images only to then release the raw images?
Established Member
I thought about posting this earlier so I guess I will now.
Why are you expecting scientific value from internet jpegs?
Exactly. These images are being released early to give the public something to see, as part of an effort to keep the public informed about the science results as quickly as possible, and to keep attention on the missions. However, the detailed processing of these images won't happen for some time. It just can't. There's a limit to the number of people working on the project and to the budget to pay for folks to do this stuff. And there is a requisite amount of time it takes to do image processing. And they can't even do the processing until they pull the data that tells them how long the component images were exposed and what stretch ratios were used in order to back filter the images to get the saturation levels comparable. That isn't instantaneous, either. So while it's great there are some neat pictures coming out, and it's great they're throwing raw data up so folks can do some limited work on their own, the stuff we're getting is not meant to be high quality scientific data.
Established Member
Ok, sorry... :roll: I'm just annoyed by people replying to my posts without reading them.
Established Member
Ok, now I understand the reason of "fake" pictures, but...
...but you are another person :roll: which replies to my posts without reading them (The Bad Astronomer, do you understand why I get angry?) :Not to mention your whole hoax theory is flawed in that JPL have posted the original pictures freely on their page. What is the point in them going to the trouble of doctoring their images only to then release the raw images?
Never talked about "conspiracy", I just said that they post fake images and I don't know why: maybe due to error, or intentionally, or, just to smile, to hide Little Green Men...
ANYAWAY, I repeat that now I understand the reason of the reddish sky and the looking-fake-but-actually-overexposed images, so please don't quote my I just said that they post fake images and I don't know why sentence above... :roll:
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8-[ ??? I don't know... just because they are on the official site of a great Space company, I suppose.I thought about posting this earlier so I guess I will now.
Why are you expecting scientific value from internet jpegs?
How many people viewing "press released images" into paper-magazines or TV-news will also discover that they have been intentionally "embellished" just for them, and that they does not actually correspond to how Mars is?
Established Member
Neither did I. You're the one who came here and started a topic about how you're disgusted about 'NASA's Hoax'. You also mentioned yourself in a post that 'NASA were intentionally retouching the images because they don't like the natural martian sky'
hoax n.
An act intended to deceive or trick.
So my point is valid. If theyre intending to deceive us all on the appearance of mars, why bother releasing the raw data that would expose this hoax.
Banned
JumpJack let me thank you for trying, but they won't believe you or you're evidence.
I believe NASA probably scrubs UFO'S or strange objects out of their images, if they can without it being obvious. From testimony I've heard, pictures I've seen as well as video. They all point to "image scrubbing".
During the Apollo mission I worked at NASA throughout those Apollo missions and I did leave NASA at the time the space shuttles began. I worked in building eight in the photo lab. I had a secret clearance so I thought I could go anywhere in the building. And I did go into one area that was a restricted area. In this area they developed pictures taken from satelites and also all of the missions, the Apollo missions, flight missions. I went in and I was talking to one of the photographers and developers and he was putting together a mosaic which is a lot of photos, smaller photos into a larger photo pattern. And while I was in there I was trying to learn new methods and new things about the whole organization and I was looking at the pictures and he directed my attention to one area, he said, Look at that. I looked and there was a round oval shaped, well it was very white circular shape of a dot and I, it was black & white photography, so I asked him if that was a spot on the emulsion and he said, well I can't tell you but spots on the emulsion do not leave round circles of shadows. a round shadow! And I noticed that there were pine trees, now I don't know where this area was or what, you, pretty close to the ground what I saw but I didn't see outline of the continent. But I did notice that thre was shadow under this white dot and I also noticed that the trees were casting the shadows in the same direction as this shadow of the circle of this aerial phenomena because it was higher than the trees but not too much higher than the trees but it was close to the ground and it was spherical but slightly elongated, not very much but slightly. I then said, is it a UFO? And he said, Well I can't tell you. And then I asked him, what are you going to do with this piece of information? And he said, well we have to airbrush these things out before we sell these photographs to the public. So I realized at that point that there is a procedure setup to take care of this type of information from the public.
- DONNA HARE, Former NASA Employee
Established Member
What evidence? The guy is complaining about cleaned up press images not matching raw data he has no idea how to process. That's hardly evidence for a hoax related to the images.JumpJack let me thank you for trying, but they won't believe you or your evidence.
Kinda off topic, but I guess related to where the topics gone. Why are people so easily convinced by heresay and speculation. There are so many things wrong with the Donna Tietze Hare claims:I believe NASA probably scrubs UFO'S or strange objects out of their images, if they can without it being obvious. From testimony I've heard, pictures I've seen as well as video. They all point to "image scrubbing".
1) Why does Donna have 'secret clearance' (implying she works in a restricted area) yet know nothing of the image scrubbing, image retouching, media-blackout on UFO's etc. You would expect someone with such a high clearance to be involved in something to do with restricted material.
2) If Donna was not supposed to see this process (as is suggested by her seemingly not knowing about it) why does her clearance allow her to access that area. I would expect NASA to have a substantial security system in the Apollo era, especially for something this 'secret'.
3) If these people in the restricted area are responsible for such an important task as this grand coverup, they would be monitored by some kind of surveillance system. Why was this event completely missed by the security team, and how was Donna able to retell this story without being supressed by the big and evil NASA.
4) The employees of this restricted area would probably go through a tough selection process. They would most likely value their job and the company they work for. These kind of people would not simply show off or brag a UFO in a picture to an unknown visitor in the building. If respected Apollo astronauts were successfully threatened with jail/everything taken from them, why were these employees so careless with sensitive information?
5) The whole way she is told of these processes is just downright cheesy. It's the kind of thing you expect to see in a low budget, poorly scripted, x-file-a-like tv series. For example "so I asked him if that was a spot on the emulsion and he said, well I can't tell you but spots on the emulsion do not leave round circles of shadows. a round shadow!". The guy tells her he's not allowed to tell her, yet at the same time he does.
6) Why is it not possible to find anything about Donna Tietze Hare that is not written by a conspiracy theorist. Every website, video and reference is simply the same story regurgitated (conveniently missing out the parts where she says all Apollo astronauts saw aliens and were threatened with jail/death, and that Apollo 13 was actually rescued by aliens).
I could go on and on and explain logical reasons why this story (and many others like it) are simply made up tales. At best they're based on some true event and then exaggerated or modified to fit the context. At worst they're lies used to sucker conspiracy nuts into buying the latest 'Your Government is Evil but I know the truth' videos and books.
I guess I can round things up by saying that the only 'image brushing' evident by NASA in regards to these Mars pictures is processing to make the image look cleaner, hence it being labelled 'Enhanced'.
Established Member
Hare is about as credible as Nancy Lieder. I am surprised anyone would bring her up as evidence of anything.
Order of Kilopi
Somehow, I'm not.
Established Member
I have to say, that's a pretty crummy story. Poorly written, inconsistent, unexciting, unoriginal... At least the X-Files would have stuck in a climactic chase scene or surprise twist. [-X
Also, getting your contractions and pronouns right goes a long way when you're trying to make a convincing story.
Banned
I did not honestly expect anything other than above, but I do take her testimony seriously.
The guy who listed all of the reason's, were not really reasons. Just question you have for NASA. I guess you could ask them.
I think the atmosphere at NASA is DO NOT TALK ABOUT UFO'S OR ALIENS. Remember NASA and Okeefe saying they have a bad atmosphere at NASA that discourages employees from speaking up? I do believe this may also be part of it. This is all my opinion based on people like Hare.
Does anyone believe Donna Hare?
Order of Kilopi
Firstly to the claim that NASA censors things or cuts transmission, check out the REAL story here
Second.Well let's see.
She claims that:
The satallite image showed pine trees and their shadows
Reality tells us:
No present day NASA satallite has this capablity, so how could one have had it back in the 1970's?
She claims that:
She swore about her experience at NASA before Congress.
Reality tells us:
No such event ever took place
She claims that:
if she were lying she could be placed in jail.
Reality tells us:
The there is no such law or reason to jail her.
She claims that:
All astronauts see UFOs
Reality tells us:
According to Apollo-14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell who was a supporter of UFO investigtions, "these astronaut UFO stories are fiction, are untrue."
She claims that:
the photo was being prepared for public sale
Reality tells us:
No one has even been able to find a copy of the alleged photo or anything even similar.
As you can see, what she claims and what reality is are two rather different things. If you want to believe her, well all fine and good, but in doing so understand that you are believing the claims of an apparently delusional woman.
Established Member
They're questions you should ask yourself when reading Hare's claims. Is it asking too much for people to think critically and logically? Or do you feel that because the story supports your views that you should accept it without really researching into it?
I can't believe I didn't actually spot that oneShe claims that:
The satallite image showed pine trees and their shadows
Reality tells us:
No present day NASA satallite has this capablity, so how could one have had it back in the 1970's?. Then again it did only take me all of 20 seconds to come up with my six points and I really wasn't thinking that hard.
I can see an excuse for that one being "it was advanced technology on a super secret satellite that the public was not to know about", but Hare herself states that the photographs were intended for the public (hence the reason for airbrushing).
Established Member
Ok, guys, let's summurize results:
Combining replies from this forum and from another forum, and also looking at this image and this image, it is now clear that:
- NASA deletes original sky from rovers' photos becuase it is not good to see (image 1)
- The image below has not been retouched, it's just the rover camera failure
(See extreme example in the second image linked).
So, in the first case, no "hoax", just "embellishment" :roll: , in the second case no "Hoax", just "failure".
I suggest you to continue posting UFO, conspiracies and other woo-woo arguments into another topic...
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