MOC narrow-angle image E06-00269

[Phaeton80]

“Here (below) is the most spectacular and best preserved 3-D version of this crucially significant “geometry” yet found — a fully three-dimensional Reuleaux Tetrahedral Pyramid, discovered by the late Wilmer Faust on Mars Surveyor image E06002 — taken July 7, 2001 in West Candor Chasma (one of the smaller, northern side canyons of the vast ~3000-mile-long “Vallis Marineris” system).”

http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/e01_e06/full_jpg_non_map/E06/E0600269.jpg

Thoughts?

[Space Commander Travis]

I'm sure Richard Hoagland would be able to tell you.

[Phaeton80]

His thoughts? Yes, Im sure he can.

Im not asking him though, Im asking all of you here.

[Asadora]

I wish it was in colour.

[Spacenut56]

Its interesting, and goes along the lines of the famous Mars face discovery made in 1976. As I recall there were remnants of what some believed were a city of some kind, including pyramid type structures, not far away from the rock that was dubbed Mars face. There was an excellent book that came out years ago, that had more closeups of both this area and the remnants. The title of the book escapes me.

[JesseCuster]

Scour through natural features on the earth, moon, Mars, etc. for long enough and you'll find things with shapes resembling geometric shapes or faces or what have you. What about this is "crucially significant"?

Edited July 23, 2013 by JesseCuster

[JesseCuster]

Its interesting, and goes along the lines of the famous Mars face discovery made in 1976. As I recall there were remnants of what some believed were a city of some kind, including pyramid type structures, not far away from the rock that was dubbed Mars face. There was an excellent book that came out years ago, that had more closeups of both this area and the remnants. The title of the book escapes me.

of course if you actually examine the latest available images of the Face and "cityscape" in Cydonia you'll realise that the actually hills and mesas resemble neither even remotely.

[Phaeton80]

Scour through natural features on the earth, moon, Mars, etc. for long enough and you'll find things with shapes resembling geometric shapes or faces or what have you. What about this is "crucially significant"?

Then you probably wouldnt be bothered to underwrite your statement with one or some of the many closely comparable examples.. Three converging straight lines forming a tetrahedron, preferably.

[Hazzard]

http://www.msss.com/...06/E0600269.jpg

Thoughts?

My thoughts,... We have "weird" looking rocks and natural formations everywhere.

I like Saturns hexagon better. Now that is a real mystery.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2007-034

[JesseCuster]

Then you probably wouldnt be bothered to underwrite your statement with one or some of the many closely comparable examples.. Three converging straight lines forming a tetrahedron, preferably.

Well if you look at the example in question, it's approximate but not very close to the shape it is being claimed to be. If you overlay an actual Realeux triangle over the feature the curved edges don't match up (match up one curved side and the others are off the actual edges of a Reuleaux triangle and the vertices don't match up neatly) and the tip of the feature is quite a bit off the centre of the circle. Without further info it's hard to tell exactly what shape it is. Looking straight down at an object can be very misleading as it's hard to tell how sloped, or flat or indented, etc. the sides are. For example, when examining the D&M pyramid in Cydonia and seeing 3d models of it based upon surface height taken by orbiters, it's nowhere near as impressive as the original Viking images that some people went gaga over about it being a regular shaped pentagonal pyramid.

So there's that.

As it turns out HiRISE photographed this area as well and I'm downloading the 800Mb+ data file for one its images. I'll hunt through it and find another view of this feature and post it.

Edited July 23, 2013 by JesseCuster

[quillius]

Well if you look at the example in question, it's approximate but not close. If you overlay an actual Realeux triangle over the feature the curved edges don't match up and the tip of the feature is quite a bit off the centre of the circle.

So there's that.

As it turns out HiRISE photographed this area as well and I'm downloading the 800Mb+ data file for one its images. I'll hunt through it and find another view of this feature and post it.

wouldnt that depend on the the angle of the photo? i.e. it doesnt look directly over the top, only then could you determine how precise the the centre is

[JesseCuster]

wouldnt that depend on the the angle of the photo? i.e. it doesnt look directly over the top, only then could you determine how precise the the centre is

The emission angle for this photo is 0.16 degrees. That means the angle the camera was pointing at was 0.16 degrees from vertical. For our purposes that's as close to looking straight down as makes no difference. I will notice that the pixel aspect ratio is given as 1.04 and I don't know if that's been corrected for in the OP image.

[quillius]

The emission angle for this photo is 0.16 degrees. That means the angle the camera was pointing at was 0.16 degrees from vertical. For our purposes that's as close to looking straight down as makes no difference. I will notice that the pixel aspect ratio is given as 1.04 and I don't know if that's been corrected for in the OP image.

ok, thats a detailed enough response for me.....dont have the expertise in this field to debate your counter.

[taniwha]

Whats most interesting is how it is nestled amongst the trees.

[JesseCuster]

Then you probably wouldnt be bothered to underwrite your statement with one or some of the many closely comparable examples.. Three converging straight lines forming a tetrahedron, preferably.

Here's a screenshot taken from the University of Arizona's online Mars image database viewer. This is from the HiRISE camera onboard the MRO. I'll be posted something taken from data closer to the source as soon as it's downloaded but it should be obvious that it's not quite the "Reuleaux Tetrahedral Pyramid" with "three converging straight lines" as described so far in this thread. The images int the Flash viewer are processed and very compressed to make them more user friendly to look at and faster to browse but still should give you an idea of what we're looking at.

Two of the ridges is not at all straight and one side of the "pyramid" is completely off being part of a Reuleaux triangle.

Edited July 23, 2013 by JesseCuster

[JesseCuster]

And now that I've downloaded an 800Mb image data file straight from the horse's mouth and cropped out the feature in question, here's an even better view of it. It's amazing what you can find when you know where to look.

[JesseCuster]

Whats most interesting is how it is nestled amongst the trees.

Trees?

[taniwha]

um... welll i meant sand dunes...

Great enlargement BTW Jesse, mystery resolved....

Edited July 23, 2013 by taniwha

[Hazzard]

Thanks for posting that, Jesse.

[JesseCuster]

Advice to the OP and others who are interested in this kind of Martian exploration - if you've found something you think is interesting, make sure you're looking at the highest quality imagery available. Many features that look interesting have been photographed at higher resolution by another orbiter and revealed (like this, the D&M pyramid, the Cydonia Face, etc.) to be nowhere near as interesting or geometric or symmetric, etc. as they might be at first glance.

The HiRISE images from the current MRO orbiter are the best and in this case we were lucky that it had photographed the same feature as it has only mapped a small fraction of the surface. The CTX camera on the same orbiter takes wider angle less detailed images but has imaged something like ~60%

Google Mars can give you a layer which shows you images from the various orbiters that have mapped Mars and there's an option to turn on the CTX images so you can see over half the planet in pretty high level of detail.

There's also an online viewer for various orbiters here - http://global-data.mars.asu.edu/ if you know the image reference or co-ordinates you can use a Flash viewer to zoom in and browse around the images. It's a handy tool for exploring Mars.

But go the original whenever possible. The .img or .jp2 files which can be huge multi-hundred megabyte files contain resolution and detail and much less processing than what you'll find in the link above. It can be a pain downloading them and browsing them (especially in NASA's not very user friendly NASAView software) but there's where you get the really high quality stuff like the image I posted above. Which haven't been subject to the heavy compression of images available on Google Mars or the Flash viewer I mentioned above.

Edited July 23, 2013 by JesseCuster

[Phaeton80]

Here's a screenshot taken from the University of Arizona's online Mars image database viewer. This is from the HiRISE camera onboard the MRO. I'll be posted something taken from data closer to the source as soon as it's downloaded but it should be obvious that it's not quite the "Reuleaux Tetrahedral Pyramid" with "three converging straight lines" as described so far in this thread. The images int the Flash viewer are processed and very compressed to make them more user friendly to look at and faster to browse but still should give you an idea of what we're looking at.

Two of the ridges is not at all straight and one side of the "pyramid" is completely off being part of a Reuleaux triangle.

Issue resolved I would think. You had that pic all along didnt you, sneeky bugger.

[JesseCuster]

Issue resolved I would think. You had that pic all along didnt you, sneeky bugger.

I've just learned where to go to for the good stuff. Always look for better quality images. And like I said above, go straight to the source if possible. If you're willing to be patient and are genuinely interested in exploring Mars, it's definitely worth putting in the extra effort to hunt down the best evidence available.

[Phaeton80]

Feel free to drop any additional links you deem valuable.

[JesseCuster]

Phaeton80, I found the quote in your opening post. It's from this steaming pile of nonsense by Richard C. Hoagland - http://www.enterpris...-White-Crow.htm. He's an outright crank. A nutcase. And that piece of writing is nothing but wildly pseudoscientific garbage. If you got that quote from there and thought that was an article worth quoting, I fear you've fallen for the crazy rantings of charlatans and crackpots. Absolutely nothing in that article is substantiated. It's all garbage dressed up in what might look scientific claims to the gullible. He's taken others work, drawn lines and triangles and curves on it, run some arbitrary measurements through the meat grinder of numerology and ended up with utterly nonsensical and fantastical claims like the "50 miles high Gale Reuleaux Tetrahedron" thingamajig he's rambling on about in part of that article.

To all but the most gullible, that article is obvious garbage. A string of wild, unsubstaniated, pseudoscientific claims based upon nothing but his imagination.

Edited July 23, 2013 by JesseCuster

[Space Commander Travis]

Phaeton80, I found the quote in your opening post. It's from this steaming pile of nonsense by Richard C. Hoagland - http://www.enterpris...-White-Crow.htm. He's an outright crank. A nutcase. And that piece of writing is nothing but wildly pseudoscientific garbage. If you got that quote from there and thought that was an article worth quoting, I fear you've fallen for the crazy rantings of charlatans and crackpots. Absolutely nothing in that article is substantiated. It's all garbage dressed up in what might look scientific claims to the gullible. He's taken others work, drawn lines and triangles and curves on it, run some arbitrary measurements through the meat grinder of numerology and ended up with utterly nonsensical and fantastical claims like the "50 miles high Gale Reuleaux Tetrahedron" thingamajig he's rambling on about in part of that article.

To all but the most gullible, that article is obvious garbage. A string of wild, unsubstaniated, pseudoscientific claims based upon nothing but his imagination.

it's fun, though, you must admit.