Most detailed pic of Mars EVER from Earth

[JackHiggins]

Ok so actually earth *orbit*, but hey...

Check out todays APOD for a spectacular pic of Mars from Hubble


Cool, huh?

[jamarsa]

Celestia is far more impressive... but MGS beats it!!

[pint]

do you know the exact UTC when the picture was taken?

it would be interesting to compare it to celesita's version

[JackHiggins]

Quote from Hubblesite.org:

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope took this snapshot of Mars 11 hours before the planet made its closest approach to Earth. The two planets are 34,648,840 miles (55,760,220 km) apart. This image was made from a series of exposures taken between 6:20 p.m. and 7:12 p.m. EDT Aug. 26 with Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2.

[Paul]

Look at how blue the atmospheric scattering is around the limb. Could it be that NASA really have been pulling the wool over our eyes about Mars' sky colour? I've seen sites with very convincing arguments that they alter the images to make the sky look redder and less "Earth-like", maybe someone's got a link to one... this makes me all the more convinced.

Cheers,
Paul

[ElPelado]

This is the second picture taken by the HSP, around 5:51 a.m. ET on Aug. 27.


in the page http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_hubble_030827.html you can find both pictures with labels of what you are seeing.

[JackHiggins]

Look at how blue the atmospheric scattering is around the limb. Could it be that NASA really have been pulling the wool over our eyes about Mars' sky colour? I've seen sites with very convincing arguments that they alter the images to make the sky look redder and less "Earth-like", maybe someone's got a link to one... this makes me all the more convinced.

Actually the first viking pics did have a blue sky, because that's what the JPL image processing people expected it to look like- turns out they oversaturated the blue part of the image when putting the RG and B images together, making the sky look blue. In fact it's kinda pinkish (as celestia shows) and blue at sunrise & sunset. Pathfinder images show this very well.

What would be the point of altering the images anyway...? What would they gain from making it seem less earthlike...? I really don't think NASA would care too much what the sky colour is to be honest- the important thing is that they've landed on MARS!!!

[mrzee]

Covering up a blue sky on Mars?
Now I've heard everything.
To what end?
Is there another theory that they have started terra forming Mars because Earth is doomed?
arrggggggg......

[Paul]

In fact it's kinda pinkish (as celestia shows) and blue at sunrise & sunset. Pathfinder images show this very well.

Well, Celestia's just copying the results from Mars missions, isn't it? Also, I don't recall seeing any Pathfinder pictures that have any blueness to the Martian sky. Do you have a URL to any such images? The only ones I've seen that had any blueness were the ones which had been "re-adjusted" away from the NASA version.

What would be the point of altering the images anyway...? What would they gain from making it seem less earthlike...?

The reasoning (speculative, of course) was that NASA tinted the images to make them look more "alien" because they thought the images looked too Earth-like, and they were afraid people would think that the pictures were of some Earh desert and the mission was a hoax... sounds depressingly familiar, doesn't it!

Cheers,
Paul

[t00fri]

I do not believe these colors.

How come that /all past truecolor RGB photo's/ from HST's wide field camera have this very red appearance (see my photo's from the Nasa site a number of threads [in textures] back) that also nicely extrapolates to what I can see with my own eyes in my telescope!

Bye Fridger

[JackHiggins]

In fact it's kinda pinkish (as celestia shows) and blue at sunrise & sunset. Pathfinder images show this very well.

Well, Celestia's just copying the results from Mars missions, isn't it? Also, I don't recall seeing any Pathfinder pictures that have any blueness to the Martian sky. Do you have a URL to any such images? The only ones I've seen that had any blueness were the ones which had been "re-adjusted" away from the NASA version.

What would be the point of altering the images anyway...? What would they gain from making it seem less earthlike...?

The reasoning (speculative, of course) was that NASA tinted the images to make them look more "alien" because they thought the images looked too Earth-like, and they were afraid people would think that the pictures were of some Earh desert and the mission was a hoax... sounds depressingly familiar, doesn't it!

Cheers,
Paul

You can find loads on the google image search
http://images.google.ie/images?hl=en&ie ... b=wi&meta=
(ok some of them have red sunsets too, but many are blue)

However- I really, REALLY don't think that NASA would stoop to the level of altering photos, just to satisfy some stupid conspiracy theorists. Anyway, if they did, it doesn't seem to have worked, because theres always some wacko going around saying we never went to the moon/landed on mars/ etc etc...

Btw Paul please don't say that you actually believe in some of this hoax rubbish...

I do not believe these colors.

How come that /all past truecolor RGB photo's/ from HST's wide field camera have this very red appearance (see my photo's from the Nasa site a number of threads [in textures] back) that also nicely extrapolates to what I can see with my own eyes in my telescope!

I wouldn't be experienced enough to tell you... Maybe they are slightly false colours, to show up more detail etc? After all the Hubbles job is to return the best, most detailed pics, not to show us what we would see ourselves, if we were in hubbles position.

I think...

[JackHiggins]

Paul

Here are some true colour pics:

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01547 - sunset

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01546 - true colour of sky at noon- not really a great pic though...

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01466 - 360 degree panorama of Pathfinder & surrounding area etc.