Here's an interesting article from 2004.

The American space agency Nasa has been accused of doctoring its pictures of Mars to make the Martian surface conform to our impression of the famously red planet.

Nasa has been accused of digitally "tweaking" drab brown scenery to make it redder. It has even been suggested that Nasa removed green patches to hide evidence of life.

The theories gained credence after Nasa told New Scientist that "getting the colours right is a surprisingly difficult and subjective job", the magazine reports today.

Most of the pictures have been taken through green, blue and infra-red filters - instead of green, blue and standard red filters, which would have produced more accurate colours.

Dr Jim Bell, who worked with Nasa on the Mars rovers' cameras, said infrared filters were used because they helped geologists to distinguish rock types. In reality, Mars appears red largely because of the dust in its atmosphere.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml.../29/wnasa29.xml



Shown below is the first color picture from Spirit.

this one is the official NASA version,

http://www.goroadachi.com/etemenanki/010604-1.jpg

This one is the same picture in which there is reduced redness. Which appears more natural or real to you?

http://www.goroadachi.com/etemenanki/010604-2.jpg

Of course, it could be that the Martian landscape is really as red as the NASA version shows. But given that it's scientifically acceptable for the Martian sky to be more or less blue, combined with the fact that we have quite compelling photographic evidence from the Viking missions exposing the excessive redness of the original pictures released by NASA, it is not so farfetched to suppose that NASA has been deceiving all of us about the real appearance of Mars all these years.

http://www.goroadachi.com/etemenanki/mars-hiddencolors.htm


some NASA pics of Mars...with a blue sky



http://www.lpi.usra.edu/expmars/edbrief/marsedFS6.gif

http://www.solarviews.com/raw/mars/21a082.gif

http://www.solarviews.com/raw/mars/21d049.gif

http://www.solarviews.com/raw/mars/12h051.gif


One thing I would like to point about the Nasa Mars pics with the blue sky is...the soil of Mars still appears very, very Red and Rust in color, the same color as it appears from space and from telescopes here on Earth. Those pics seem to be the most accurate as they have the most natural color...look at those pics with Viking lander on the surface of Mars, the lander is the same color as it appears on Earth, the soil is red and the sky is blue. If you were trying to wash out the red color with filters, the soil would not appear red. In photo 21a082, part of the Viking Lander appears more red than the soil.

original data without correction.

http://mars-news.de/color/12B069o.jpg

Here is a curious Mars pic:

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...BKF0006L0M1.JPG

can anyone tell me what these 2 things on the picture are?
One is located on the right just above the horizon and the other is located top left just off the picture...'Kodak' objects?

ok, thats retarded... nasa didn't paint mars red... we have seen it through telescopes, its red. we have seen videos... its red... we have proof that it IS red.. its from the carbon dioxide that has turned the metal in the soil red from rust and decomposition.... mars is red... and anyone who thinks differently is retarded

how do we not know that THOSE pictures are not faked, and reduced in redness....

I've read this article.

There's at least two versions of this thread in the CT section...

--Jaylemurph

U know what is extremely silly about this whole thing - IF NASA is guilty of "Painting Mars Red" - then so is EVERY backyard astronomer that has taken pictures of it! Talk about a major conspiracy! LMAO - This has just got to be the stupidest conspiracy I've yet read. Are people really that desperate???? That they are willing to make themselves not only look like fools, but stupid as well?

And people wonder why there are skeptics....

IF I was part of this group that put that website together - I'd start writing serious e-mails of protest towards them. Maybe the believers need to be a 'tad' more pro-active against such sites, claims and such that give believers a "bad name".

This should be rather easy for you to prove. Simply buy a telescope and look at mars for yourself. Not only will you see the beauty of the red planet for yourself, but it may be the beginning of your own journey of science. There are many amateur astronomers, as well as computer scientists and engineers who also follow this research. If you do not trust any of the civilian space agencies, you can begin to learn about this subject. Certainly if you believe there to be a conspiracy, applying yourself to independent review would be an appropriate course of action.

Why do people want to make a conspiracy out of thing's we can prove very easy, I just don't get the point of this myself....I'm not making fun of you but, sweetie just cause you read it on the NET that does not mean it's always going to be true.....Like the other's said go out side and look thru a telescope, After all seeing it for your self will out weigh anything we have said.......

Mars looks red through a telescope because of the atmosphere at least read the full post.

It looks like all they did was turn on a sepia filter in photo shop.

Have you considered that just because you saw it through a telescope that does not mean it's always going to be true?

Our air is relatively clear, Look at Venus through a telescope and you would have no idea what the planet looks like below the cloud cover. Are you people who believe that we are being visited by Aliens From Another Planet actually going to argue the possibility of Martian air only looking red from the outside looking in, and refuse to even consider any other explanations? Pretty closed minded for a bunch of Alien Believers...

LOL!


I agree with you but I thought that was pretty funny.

Okay, let me make something clear to the posters here who appear to me to be teens. The article is from a British newspaper, it is not my own. Mars IS a red planet...but what I was trying to point out was that the sky on mars may NOT be red. On Mars the atmosphere is so thin that the sky may actually be purple. It turns a light blue when there are high clouds in the atmosphere. If you check out the Mars Rover Mission Site you can see raw images from the time of both Spirit and Opportunity landings. The rocks are reddish, blackish, and brownish.

BTW: Color does not reside IN an object, but instead is a function of our own eyes and brain.

Ok, that needs some explaining, because it is extremely counter-intuitive, even if physically correct. When you look at an object, you are not seeing the color of the light hitting your eyes, you are seeing the absence of color hitting your eyes.

All visible spectrum light is composed of 7 colors. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet. The famous ROY G BIV of the rainbow. Every color is a combination of the colors. If you place a yellow shirt in white (full spectrum) light, what happens is the yellow shirt absorbs all of the light colors except yellow, and the yellow light reaches our eyes and we see yellow.

So, if you change the light from white to blue, and are wearing a white shirt, the shirt will appear blue because the light hiting our eyes is blue. If we change the light to green, we see green. If the color changes when the light changes, then color is a function of light and eyeball / brain combination, not object. This seems weird, because in English we say all the time, object A is blue. But really we should be saying, I see light colored blue reflected from object A.

So, back to Mars. What color is the light reaching the surface? Without exact knowledge of the wavelengths of light reaching the surface, we can not truly know what "color" the surface of Mars really is, onlt speculate! Another point to make is: What filters did NASA usE for those pictures?

That is the point. Color does not exist in the object. Color is a function of light and eyeballs. You see blue, if I was Blue/Green colorblind, I would have no idea what you were talking about.

So what if NASA has pictures of Mars that appear to have a blue sky. With filters in place, anyone can take a picture on Earth so that it appears to have a red sky. When the Viking landed there in the 70's, there may have been different filters in place then they have now, raw images were sent back to Earth...and the sky was blue in those pics. Is there a conspiracy? Probably not, NASA is just using different filters on the rover. For color registration, all imaging of objects in space have a small color wheel painted on the surface of the space vehicle within view of the imager. The imager usually includes this feature in all images it captures. When ground processing takes place the color wheel is used for color registration. The color wheel itself is not necessarily included in the final publishable image. Scientifically, color imaging is not very useful. In many cases false color images are more useful in that color clustering can reveal subtle changes in surface features that will be missed in a natural color image.

An example of the color wheel is here:

http://mars-news.de/color/12B069o.jpg

...notice the colored squares in the backround.

This is pretty neat. But I'm confused. Does this mean that we will not know the true color of Mars until we only percieve it through our eyes instead of a camera?

I found this after a relatively quick google search. It basically has the words that I was looking for but couldn't remember.

"The dust is the mineral "limonite," a brown iron oxide, the same mineral that forms most of the Martian surface. The sky is not blue as on Earth because Martian air is extremely thin and the limonite particles in the air are large relative to the wavelength of visible light. The reddish particles preferentially absorb blue light and effectively act as mirrors by scattering the remaining wavelengths: the color of the atmosphere is therefore pinkish, like the particles themselves."

Here's the link: http://webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/14C.html

So on the topic of the Martian sky, that seems to be the best evidence for why it's not a blue sky like Earth. Our relatively thick atmosphere does an incredible job of scattering blue wavelengths. The larger particles that make up the very thin Martian atmosphere easily absorb the shorter wavelengths. So, as dcman explain, we wouldn't see the color of the absorbed wavelengths, only the color of the scattered wavelengths. Martian sky=pink, brownish, or red.

Mars is red. There is no government conspiracy to hide life on Mars. Get over yourself.

The post and links have nothing to do with NASA changing the appearance of Mars looking red through a telescope.

Does anyone actually read before replying?

Do you?

Thanks for letting us know; I was wondering if you had read it yet, but didn't want to take up thread space to ask...

I think the problem here is that people are making it seem like Dcman is bringing up some huge conspiracy. I don't think that's the point. I think the point is that we aren't sure what filters they might be using in their equipment. And yes, I personally believe we need to be on the planet to actually see what color the sky is. I won't look at any photos and just agree that it will look exactly like the photos do. Plus, looking at a planet through a telescope is totally different than being on the planet looking out at the sky. Obviously, when you take a picture of earth it's not BLUE! Hello people! Our sky is blue right? Then by all of your logic coming out here, if we look at our sky and see blue, that must mean that our planet looks completely blue on the outside. Well, it doesn't. And just because Mars has a lack of diversity in it's color scheme doesn't automatically mean that everything about it, the surface and the sky, has to be totally red. I think a lot of you are forgetting that we can discuss something like this without making it into a conspiracy. I think this is more about actual physical accuracy not conspiracy. And the most convincing part about this is the picture they have at their conference. It is a blue sky there. Why is that, when the rest of the pictures show us a sepia looking colored sky? That part confuses me more than anything else does. So does that mean that the sky on Mars can change? If the post before is correct about the particulates in the atmosphere changing the sky's color, would that mean that if there are less of those, the sky color would be different? Do they just hang out in the atmosphere all the time, or do they ever settle like in a snowglobe?

You're welcome.

Dude does it realy matter if NASA did sorta doctor the pic of mars? Does it realy change anything?

Finally!! I was waiting for this.

Guys, telling the guy to get a telescope and point to mars wont help at all. The planet looks different from space, that’s what happens when you see earth from space. When you are pretty close to it on its orbit, you will see a considerably layer of blue, atmosphere! But it will not cover the entire planet making it blue. It happens with Mars the same; it doesn’t mean the sky is red just because the soil is rusty, etc. It could even be a bit yellowish; also I am not saying the Martian sky is blue, but who knows for sure what color it really is. No one never step there personally, all we see is pictures that have being in some way doctored by NASA, by this, bear in mind that they receive RAW images that they have to decode in their lab. You can even download the raw files from their site, and if you have time, you can make them to some good false color images I think.

Ok, lets forget the conspiracy for a moment and have a look at this from a photographers vantage:

Due to the little density of the Martian atmosphere there is a high incidence of both UV ad IR light. When they mix they cause a haze on photographic film and/or camera's CCDs. From there it is an absolute must to have at least a UV filter. Professionals on Earth also use them.

These filters don't do anything but to remove the haze from the image. Up to here it is solid photographic work.

CCDs and film react totally differently to color than eyes. Anybody who has ever taken a picture with a natural light film in artificial light knows that (hey why are my white walls suddenly so yellow?)

Our problem with the "correct"light balance on Mars is that nobody has ever been there so we have artificial measurements that never give back the subjective impression.

I don't know about the green being removed, but as a story I am quite disappointed in the Telegraph. All they had to do is ask someone from the photo department.

DOWN WITH COHAAGEN!!!

Turn the air back on!!!!!

Impossible! Once the reaction starts, it'll spread to all the turbinium in the planet. Mars will go into global meltdown. That's why the aliens never turned it on.

Thanks for posting this, regardless of what NASA may or may have not have done - from all the pictures shown I think I Mars would still look red to us on earth, even on the supposedly doctored ones.

I enjoyed looking at the those photos and have never stopped to examine pictures of Mars before - so thanks for that, they say you learn something new every day.