Dense fogs in Valles Marineris Mars.
Robert Clark
are available here:
First Mars Express Conference Presentations.
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=36537
These reports are longer than the 2-page abstracts seen from the Lunar
and Planetary Science Conference, some over 30 pages long.
A great image of dense fog in Valles Marineris is shown in this
report:
Reflectance of fog in Valles Marineris.
A. Inada
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/doc.cfm?fobjectid=36724
And this report has a beautiful full-color image of this very dense
fog:
Adsorption water driven processes on Mars.
D. Möhlmann
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/doc.cfm?fobjectid=36779
This article speculates on how adsorbed layers of water might be used
by microbes on Mars.
Valles Marineris is both low altitude and low latitude so should be
within the pressure and temperature range to permit liquid water for
this fog close to the surface.
cf.,
From: Robert Clark (rgrego...@yahoo.com)
Subject: Supercooled liquid water can occur in clouds below 0 degrees
C.
Newsgroups: sci.astro, alt.sci.planetary, sci.geo.meteorology,
sci.geo.geology, sci.geo.mineralogy
Date: 2004-07-30 06:53:02 PST
http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?th=5bba314873613fde&
Bob Clark
Robert Clark
http://sciforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=3999
Bob Clark
Mitchell Jones
"Robert Clark" <rgrego...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Here's the link to that dense fog over Marineris:
>
> http://sciforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=3999
***{Wow! Has that been retouched? If not, that's one of the most
spectacular Mars photos I've ever seen! Of especial interest is what
appears to be a pool of liquid water showing at the far right of the
photo. Using the scale shown, the location of the pool is 129 km down
from the top edge, and 22 km in from the right edge. It looks like a
nice blue pool of water! And I see other apparent pools elsewhere, all
of them down in the low areas, some obscured by fog. The NASA folks, of
course, will explain it all away. "It's just another one of them pesky
false color photos," they will say. That's their standard comment
whenever lots of green or blue jumps out at the "lay" observer. --MJ}***
Mitchell Jones
Mitchell Jones <mjo...@21cenlogic.com> wrote:
> In article <1110884206.9...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> "Robert Clark" <rgrego...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Here's the link to that dense fog over Marineris:
> >
> > http://sciforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=3999
>
> ***{Wow! Has that been retouched? If not, that's one of the most
> spectacular Mars photos I've ever seen! Of especial interest is what
> appears to be a pool of liquid water showing at the far right of the
> photo. Using the scale shown, the location of the pool is 129 km down
> from the top edge, and 22 km in from the right edge. It looks like a
> nice blue pool of water! And I see other apparent pools elsewhere, all
> of them down in the low areas, some obscured by fog. The NASA folks, of
> course, will explain it all away. "It's just another one of them pesky
> false color photos," they will say. That's their standard comment
> whenever lots of green or blue jumps out at the "lay" observer. --MJ}***
***{After a considerable amount of digging and a few e-mails, I have
managed to get a definitive answer concerning the bona fides of the
photo linked above (i.e., at
http://sciforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=3999). This comes from
a source close to the European Space Agency who for the time being shall
remain nameless: "This is a real picture, no specific image processing
was used."
Daytime temperatures on Mars are frequently well above freezing, and I
have seen reports of daytime summer temperatures upwards of 20 deg. C,
though that is apparently unusual and those temperatures would probably
not be reached at the bottom of a deep, dark canyon such as Valles
Marineris. Under those circumstances, temperatures of 5 or 10 deg C
might be attained, but the maxima attained under more favorable
conditions would be very unlikely. Looking in an old edition of the
*Handbook of Chemistry and Physics*, I see that the vapor pressure of
pure distilled water at 5 deg C is 6.543 mmHg, and that the vapor
pressure at 10 deg C is 9.209 mmHg. Since water can only exist in liquid
form when its vapor pressure is less than atmospheric pressure, it
follows that atmospheric pressure in Valles Marineris must lie within or
above that range in order for pure, liquid water to exist there..
So, what is the atmospheric pressure at the bottom of Valles Marineris
at the point where the photo was taken?
Well, typical "surface" pressures on Mars, according to *The Facts on
File Dictionary of Astronomy* (pg. 268), are around 7 mb, which is
(7/1013)(760) = 5.25 mmHg, and so on the face of it liquid water should
not be able to exist there. However, at the location shown on the photo,
the bottom of Valles Marineris is about 5 km beneath the arbitrarily
chosen "surface" level. [See pg. 1, Adsorption water-driven processes on
Mars, D. Möhlmann, DLR-PF, Berlin, available at the ESA website.] Since
pressure increases as altitude decreases, the question is not whether
liquid water can exist at the artifically designated "surface" level on
Mars, but whether it can exist 5 km further down, under the higher
pressures that prevail at the bottom of Valles Marineris.
To try to answer that question, let's use the so called "barometric
pressure formula:"
P = P0e^(-Mg0z/RT)
In the above P0 is the pressure at the lower level, P is the pressure at
the upper level, e is the base of natural logarithms, M is the mass of 1
mole of atmosphere, g0 is the appropriate gravitational acceleration, z
is the vertical distance from the lower level to the upper level, R is
the molar gas constant, and T is the average absolute temperature in the
vertical column of atmosphere beginning at P0 and ending at the top of
the stratosphere (i.e., the bottom of the ionosphere).
Why the top of the stratosphere? Because the barometric formula only
calculates the effects of gravity on pressure. It is, in effect, a way
of determining the weight of a vertical column of atmosphere of unit
cross section at one level, based on knowledge of its weight at another
level and its average temperature. Since simple pooling of air molecules
under the influence of gravity ceases to be the dominant determinant of
pressure at the top of the stratosphere, the column of air to which the
barometric formula applies stops when the ionosphere is reached. That is
not to say that the air above the stratosphere, beginning with the
ionosphere, has no effect on pressures at lower levels. Rather it is to
say that the effects in question have very little to do with the
*weight* of the material, and a lot to do with such things as the solar
wind, solar radiation, magnetic field lines, etc.--things which the
barometric formula does not take into account. During the day, in fact,
the presence of upper atmosphere material has the effect of reducing the
ground level pressure rather than increasing it, which is the exact
opposite of what we would expect based on its weight. Thus to avoid
calculating a ground level pressure that is too high, I will ignore the
presence of that material.
We want to determine the pressure at the lower level, so we will solve
the barometric formula for P0, which gives the following:
P0 = P/e ^(-Mg0z/RT) (1
The various values on the right side are as follows:
(1) P = 7 mb, or 700 Pa.
(2) The value of e is 2.718....
(3) The Martian atmosphere is .95 CO2, .027 N2, .016 A, and .0015 O2, so
the mass of a mole of atmosphere is M = [.95(44) + .027(28) + .016(40) +
.0015(32)]/1000 = .04324 kg.
(4) Mars "surface" gravity is .37735849056603776 times that of Earth, so
g0 = 3.698 m/sec^2.
(5) The altitude difference is z = 5000 meters.
(6) The molar gas constant is R = 8.314 J/kg.
(7) To come up with a value for T, the average absolute temperature
below the ionosphere, requires a bit of work.
To begin, note that measurements by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor put the
top of the Martian stratosphere at about 93,000 meters. [See
http://agena.bu.edu/mars.htm.] That, therefore, will be the altitude of
the top of the column of atmosphere with which we are concerned. And the
altitude of the bottom of the column, for present purposes, will be 0
meters.
What we want is the average absolute temperature in that column of
atmosphere. To get it, we cannot simply take the middle altitude and
look up the temperature at that altitude, because the masses within the
column are not distributed evenly. The temperature of a mole of gas is T
= pv/R, and there are more moles per unit volume at the bottom of a
column of atmosphere than at the top, because the atmosphere gets
progressively thinner at higher altitudes. The average temperature, in
short, comes at the altitude of average density. Thus we will calculate
the average density, and then plug that value into the NASA Martian
Atmosphere Calculator (see
http://www.lerc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/atmosi.html) to determine the
temperature at that altitude. That will be the value of T that we seek.
According to the hydrostatic pressure formula, p = hdg. We will re-write
it as:
d = p/gh
d is the average density of the atmosphere in a column of unit cross
section stretching from the "surface" to the ionosphere.
p is the pressure at the bottom of the column--i.e., the surface
pressure of 700 Pa.
h in this case is the distance from ground level to the ionosphere:
93,000 meters.
g is the gravitational acceleration on Mars, which is 3.698 m/sec^2.
The average density in the Martian atmosphere is therefore
d = p/gh = (700)/(3.698)(93000))
= .00203 kg/m^3, or .002, rounded.
Turning to the NASA calculator mentioned above and selecting "Mars" and
"metric units", we find that the density of the Martian atmosphere is
0.002 at an altitude of 20,433 meters, and that the temperature at that
altitude is -73 deg C. That, therefore, is the average temperature of
the portion of the Martian atmosphere which lies below the ionosphere.
The average absolute temperature in that region is therefore 273 - 73 =
200 K.
The estimated pressure at the bottom of Valles Marineris is therefore
P0 = 700/(2.718)^-(.04324)(3.698)(5000)/(8.314)(200), or
P0 = 1132.18 Pa, which is 11.3218 mb or 8.4942 mmHg.
Looking back at my vapor pressure tables for pure water, I find that
they are less than 8.4942 mmHg for temperatures up to 8.8 deg C. That
means pure water can exist in liquid form up to 8.8 deg C or 47.8 deg F,
at the location shown in the photo.
But, of course, any water flowing into the bottom of Valles Marineris
will without a doubt be mineral laden water from underground
hydrothermal sources. The salinity will be high, and as dissolved
minerals accumulate in water, its vapor pressure declines. Moreover, it
is a simple, linear relationship known as Raolt's law--to wit: the vapor
pressure of a solvent containing dissolved minerals is directly
proportional to the mole fraction of the solute in the solution, where
"mole fraction" is simply the number of moles of the substance (water,
in this case) divided by the total number of moles in the solution. Thus
if V0 is the vapor pressure of pure water at a given temperature, f is
the mole fraction of water in the solution, and V is the vapor pressure
of the solution, then according to Raolt's law, V = fV0.
Sea water, for example, contains 35 gm of dissolved salts for every kg
of water, with the salts being mostly NaCl. Let's simplify slightly and
assume the 35 gms are entirely NaCl. In that case, since the molecular
weight of NaCl is 58, the solution contains 35/58 = .6 mol, and, since
there are 1000 gms of H2O, which is 55.6 moles, it follows that the mole
fraction of H2O in sea water is 55.6/(55.6 + .6) = .989, and so for sea
water V = (.989)V0 as per the Raolt's law formula.
That, of course, means there is very little reduction in vapor pressure
when sea water is substituted for pure water. In fact, that only takes
us up to 8.9 deg C, where the vapor pressure drops to V = (.989)(8.551)
= 8.457 mmHg, which is just slightly less than the atmospheric pressure
of 8.49 mmHg. Thus if the water pouring into Valles Marineris were like
sea water on Earth, then it would remain liquid at temperatures up to
8.9 deg C, or 48 deg F.
However, sea water on Earth is not saturated with NaCl. In fact, 358 gms
of NaCl can be dissolved in 1 kg of water at 10 deg C (and more at
higher temperatures). That would be 358/58 = 6.17 moles. The 1000 gm of
H2O is 51 moles. Hence the mole fraction of water would be f =
55.6/(55.6 + 6.17) = .9. Result: V = (.9)V0. And that, based on another
look at the vapor pressure tables, is enough to permit liquid water to
exist up to 10.2 deg C, or about 50 deg F.
Other solutes, or multiple solutes, can take us even higher. Most
effective are salts with a low molecular weight and a high solubility,
so that the mole fraction of the solute jumps up, thereby reducing the
mole fraction of the solvent (water). Looking in my handbook again, I
see that the solubility (by interpolation) of LiCl at 12 deg C is 733 gm
in 1000 gm of H2O. Molecular weight of LiCl is 42, so that's 17.45
moles. The 1000 gm of H2O is 55.6 moles. Therefore the mole fraction of
water is 55.6/(55.6 + 17.45) = .761. Hence at 12 deg C we find that V =
(.761)(10.52) = 8.01 mmHg. And that works: with P = 8.49 mmHg and V =
8.0 mmHg, the water will remain liquid at 12 deg C, or 53.6 deg F.
Getting from 10 to 12 deg C by means of lithium chloride sounds like a
stretch, of course, but it could happen. It seems likely that the water
flowing into Valles Marineris is icemelt caused by heat emanating from
the magma chambers of the nearby Tharsis volcanos, and if the ultimate
source of the water is Mars' long since frozen ancient seas, it might
very well contain lots of dissolved salts, including LiCl. On Earth, for
example, it is estimated that there are 230 billion tons of lithium
chloride in sea water, but only 14 million tons on land. [See
http://202.221.217.59/print/news/nn04-2004/nn20040418a9.htm.] Moreover,
there is a process that would automatically raise all solutes to
saturation, given sufficient time. (See explanation further down.)
Anyway, regardless of how far above 10 deg C water can remain liquid in
Valles Marineris, it is a sure thing that pools of liquid water are a
real possibility there. Given the photo referenced earlier, showing the
fog and the apparent pools of blue water, it is my guess that Valles
Marineris was carved by underground icemelt flowing into the bottom of
the canyon, with the source of heat being the magma chamber under the
nearby Tharsis volcanos. I would suggest that geothermal heating from
magma near Valles Marineris melts buried ice from an ancient Martian
sea, and that liquid water then flows out into the bottom of the canyon.
Based on the above calcs, such water could remain liquid at least to 10
deg C and, arguably, to 12 deg C. Since solar heating would seldom push
the summer temperature above 10 deg C, and since water flows entering
the canyon from vents at the bottom would cool quickly by evaporation to
temperatures at which they would remain liquid, it follows that if
steady inflows of geothermally heated water are available at the bottom
of the canyon, pools of liquid water will exist there.
Interestingly, there is a photo of a portion of Reull Vallis, one of the
canyons feeding into Valles Marineris from the north, which appears to
show a lake of liquid water more than 100 km in length, and averaging 15
or 20 km in width. See
http://www.esa.int/export/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEMAZ625WVD_1.html to
view this photo.
If you see nothing but bare rocks, then I suggest that you note the
following facts:
(1) If there is no wind or other source of disturbance, the surface of
water is as flat as a sheet of glass.
(2) If there are no suspended particulates, water is perfectly
transparent.
(3) The intrinsic color of water is blue, a fact that is revealed
progressively, as the water becomes deeper and deeper. [See
http://webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/5B.html.]
(4) The sky is not blue on Mars, so there is no opportunity for
reflection to make shallow water appear to be blue, as often happens on
Earth. Thus if water on Mars shows blue, it will be deep water only.
With those facts in mind, I suggest that you download the hi-res tiff
version of the above referenced photo and study it carefully. If you do,
you will note that a distinct water line is visible most of the way
around the lake, and that as the water gets deeper and deeper, its blue
coloration is progressively revealed.
I say that's a lake--a huge one, as a matter of fact.
Here is how such a lake would come into being:
(1) An upwelling of hot water from a deep geothermal source would spread
out on the bottom of the canyon.
(2) Atmospheric pressure at the bottom of the canyon would be roughly
8.49 mmHg and, if the air temperature were above roughly 10 to 12 deg C,
vaporization by boiling would promote rapid cooling of the water and
would increase its salinity.
(3) Over the eons, the salinity of the remaining water would be
progressively increased, each time the atmospheric temperature rose high
enough to cause a repetition of (2), above.
(4) Eventually, the salinity of the water, due to the buildup of
multiple solutes, would be so high that boiling would seldom occur.
Conclusion: the photo of the fog shows an episode where the air
temperature rose high enough to promote boiling; and the photo of the
lake in Reull Vallis shows the normal case, where the air temperature is
*not* high enough to promote boiling.
Interestingly, a continuation of such boiling episodes for millions or
billions of years would result in total saturation of the water, and
continued "salting out" of minerals onto the bottom. The result would be
a buildup of immense mineral deposits in the locations where the
repeated boiling episodes were occurring. The area beneath and around
the lake at Reull Vallis, for that reason, may very well contain some of
the richest surface mineral deposits in the Solar System.
There probably aren't any fish in the lake, however. :-)
--Mitchell Jones}***
Mitchell Jones
Mitchell Jones <mjo...@21cenlogic.com> wrote:
> In article <mjones-AD3070....@spectator.sj.sys.us.xo.net>,
> Mitchell Jones <mjo...@21cenlogic.com> wrote:
[snip]
> But, of course, any water flowing into the bottom of Valles Marineris
> will without a doubt be mineral laden water from underground
> hydrothermal sources. The salinity will be high, and as dissolved
> minerals accumulate in water, its vapor pressure declines. Moreover, it
> is a simple, linear relationship known as Raolt's law--to wit: the vapor
> pressure of a solvent containing dissolved minerals is directly
> proportional to the mole fraction of the solute in the solution, where
> "mole fraction" is simply the number of moles of the substance (water,
> in this case) divided by the total number of moles in the solution.
***{When I word something poorly in a post, I don't usually bother to
with a correction, provided that it is apparent from context that the
underlying thought was correct. However, the last sentence quoted above
sucks sooooooo much that I can't let it pass, even though my use of the
concept in the context was correct. The proper wording would be:
"Moreover, it is a simple, linear relationship known as Raolt's law--to
wit: the vapor pressure of a solution containing dissolved minerals is
directly proportional to the mole fraction of the solvent in the
solution, where "mole fraction" is simply the number of moles of the
solvent (water, in this case) divided by the total number of moles in
the solution."
So there you have it. :-)
--Mitchell Jones}***
[snip]
Mitchell Jones
Mitchell Jones <mjo...@21cenlogic.com> wrote:
[snip]
[snip]
[Note: the following analysis concerns the lake shown in the Mars photo
at the following link:
http://www.esa.int/export/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEMAZ625WVD_1.html.]
According to the remarks beneath the photo, the area shown is 100 km
wide. Using that as my scale, I estimate that the lake in Reull Vallis
is at least 91 miles long, before it goes off of the photo (at both
ends). Its width at its narrowest point is 8.1 miles and at its widest
point is 38 miles. By way of contrast Lake Travis, a large lake in
Texas, is 60 miles long and 4.5 miles wide at its widest point. Thus the
Reull Vallis lake is huge!
How deep is it? Well, one strong hint is provided by the deep blue
fading to black along the bottom of the lake. As light passes through
clear water, it is attenuated by the water itself, which acts as an
absorbing medium. As the light passes deeper and deeper into the water,
it is attenuated in much the same way that atmospheric pressure is
attenuated by increasing altitude. The formula is as follows:
I = I0e^-ad
In the above, I is the intensity of the light after passing a distance d
through the absorbing medium, I0 is the intensity of the light when the
passage began, e is the base of natural logarithms, a is the absorption
coefficient of the light, and d is the distance of passage through the
medium.
Since the absorption coefficient varies in a very rough direct
proportion to the wavelength of the light, being very high for the long
wavelength (red) end of the spectrum, and very low for the short (blue)
end, we can calculate the depth where, say, 99% of the green light has
been absorbed, and that will be the depth beyond which, as a practical
matter, only blue light will reach the bottom. Hence the bottom will
appear very light blue when seen through water that is slightly deeper
than that, and progressively darker shades of blue as we go deeper
still, and, finally, when 99% of the blue light will itself have been
absorbed, only very dark blues will show, with black beyond. Since the
attenuation coefficient for the most energetic deep green light is .0162
per meter of distance travelled through the water, that is what we will
use. Using G to represent the intensity of the incoming green light, we
obtain:
.01G = Ge^-.0162d
.01 = e^-.0162d
ln .01 = -.0162d
-4.61 = -.0162d
d = 285 meters
So 99% of the deep green will be gone when the light has travelled
through 285 meters of water. Since the light comes from the sun, enters
the water, travels to the bottom, reflects, and then travels back to the
surface, the depth of the water when only a hint of green remains in the
blue will be d/2 = 230/2 = 142 meters.
At what depth will 99% of the deep blue be gone? Well, the absorption
coefficient of the most energetic deep blue light in pure water is
.00478 per meter of distance. Using B to represent the intensity of the
incoming blue light, we obtain:
.01B = Be^-.00478d
That leads to:
d = 964 meters
The lake depth is half of that, or 482 meters, as the deep blue fades
into black.
Conclusion: the lightest blue on the bottom of Reull Vallis Lake is at
depths of about 142 meters, and the darkest blues are at depths of about
482 meters. Below those levels, in the blackness, lies what are
doubtlessly lengthy passageways within a hydrothermal vent system,
leading eventually back to a magmatic heat source. That source could
either be a magma chamber close to the surface, with layers of rock
separating its top from buried ice, or it could be an active volcano
erupting periodically beneath a vast sheet of buried ice. The latter, in
my opinion, is far more likely, because such a postulate explains
virtually everything about Valles Marineris itself.
To elaborate, note that Valles Marineris begins near the Tharsis
volcanos, and slopes downhill away from them. If there were a vast ice
sheet from a frozen ancient sea, buried beneath surface accumulations of
rock and dust, and if an active volcano popped up under such an ice
sheet, its eruption would cause a collapse of the ice sheet at some
nearby point, wherever the overburden was weakest, and the overburden
would cave in on top of it. The result would be a lake of icemelt that
would boil in the low atmospheric pressure, melt nearby ice, and
gradually work its way downhill, collapsing the overburden as it did so.
Over hundreds of millions of years, such a process would form a vast
canyon system very much like Valles Marineris.
That, then, is my best guess as to what is going on here: the bottom of
Valles Marineris is like the bottom of a teakettle which has repeatedly
been used to boil water for hundreds of millions of years, and has never
been cleaned. It contains a vast accumulation of "salted out" minerals,
and those minerals, in turn, rest on what was once the bottom of an
ancient sea. The walls of the canyon, by this reasoning, are going to
turn out to be mostly surface rocks that have fallen down as the ice
melted away beneath them, and, further back, behind the walls and under
the rocky overburden, lies the ice of the ancient sea itself. How thick
is that ice sheet? Several kilometers, I should think.
So there you have it! :-)
[Notes:
(1) I took my absorption coefficients from R. M. Pope and E. S. Fry,
"Absorption spectrum (380?700nm) of pure water. II. Integrating cavity
measurements," Appl. Opt., 36, 8710--8723,
(1997).
(2) The water in Reull Vallis Lake is not pure water. Unknown
concentrations of unknown solutes are dissolved in it. Hence the above
calculations are only estimates.]
--Mitchell Jones
jacob navia
I have seen in this newsgroup for years.
extra...@comcast.net
We must somehow work around it.
ES
Dan Mckenna
The Reull Vallis Lake images are compelling to say the least.
What I don't understand is why the caption does not discuss the blue
color. I would seem that it is such a contrast from the normal color
range observed one could not look at it with out saying "whats that
about ?" yet not one peep from the Mars groups. (I am at steward
observatory across the way from LPL.) We are sitting around the control
room at one of our observatories asking questions like..
Is it due to false color processing ? or what else would be blue ?
Observations at different sun angles would help and what about radar data ?
One would think that this is the story of the year (or more) if was true.
When I get back down to UA I will ask a Mars head.
What fun
Dan
Mitchell Jones wrote:
> In article <mjones-310F5E....@spectator.sj.sys.us.xo.net>,
> Mitchell Jones <mjo...@21cenlogic.com> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>
>
> --Mitchell Jones
El Pollo Borracho
These photos are all courtesy of ESA and their orbiter, dumbass.
<extra...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:1111952664.5...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Mitchell Jones
Dan Mckenna <dmck...@as.arizona.edu> wrote:
> Hello Mitchell,
>
> The Reull Vallis Lake images are compelling to say the least.
> What I don't understand is why the caption does not discuss the blue
> color. It would seem that it is such a contrast from the normal color
> range observed one could not look at it with out saying "whats that
> about ?" Yet not one peep from the Mars groups. (I am at steward
> observatory across the way from LPL.) We are sitting around the control
> room at one of our observatories asking questions like..
> Is it due to false color processing ? Or what else would be blue ?
***{Yes, and beyond that, what else would produce the pattern of
color--i.e., the shading of blue-green to blue with a faint hint of
violet, and finally to black? That's the pattern of light absorption in
water. It's like a smoking gun. Moreover, what about the blurry,
indistinct region in the lake, where it begins to widen out to its
widest point? Hot water rises, and as it does so it causes a blurring of
vision through the plume of rising water. And as the pressure drops,
bubbles form, exaggerating the effect. What else could cause blurring of
the photo at that location? When these and other facts are considered
together it is, as you say, quite compelling. --MJ}***
> Observations at different sun angles would help and what about radar data ?
> One would think that this is the story of the year (or more) if was true.
***{Yes, it's a historic coup for ESA, and even for NASA if they embrace
it. Beyond that, dollar bills will rain down on both agencies like
snowflakes, once the public begins to realize that Mars is a place where
people might someday live. Indeed, that outcome makes George Bush look
like a genius, for having already put his support behind a manned
mission to Mars. --MJ}***
> When I get back down to UA I will ask a Mars head.
>
> What fun.
>
> Dan
***{Indeed it is. :-) --MJ}***
OsherD
I don't have time to check your derivations now, but Mars and Titan
have become more interesting than the days of Sputnik (which I also
remember). Let's not lose the momentum this time.
Osher Doctorow
Mitchell Jones
extra...@comcast.net wrote:
***{It isn't just NASA personnel who can't see the plain facts in front
of their faces. The problem is that there are two kinds of people in the
world: a tiny minority who see with their own eyes and think with their
own brains, and all the others who see what is socially expedient, so
they can fit in. Virtually all present day "scientists" fall into the
latter category, because the advent of government schools and government
funding of education, plus the passage of scores of years, has driven
most of the real scientists out of science.
One cause is simply that the availability of government loot ("grant
money") has the effect of establishing a false consensus in each area of
science where government money is available. What happens is that the
grant givers look at the distribution of opinion in the area, deny money
to the scientists who are in the tails of the distribution--i.e., those
who have "extreme" views--and, when the next grant giving session rolls
around, the distribution will be narrower, because many of those who
were excluded will have moved toward the center, in an attempt to
re-qualify themselves for a share of the loot. Result: with each grant
giving cycle, the distribution of opinion narrows, until finally a very
tight grouping around a single, mainstream point-of-view will be
observed in each area--a grouping not based on evidence, but on a desire
to conform for the purpose of receiving grant money. Once the point is
reached where virtually everyone agrees with everyone else, further
competition for grants will take the form of a hysterical antagonism
directed toward any scientist who persists in seeing with his own eyes
and thinking with his own brain, and will manifest itself in the sorts
of scurrilous personal attacks and maintenance of "crank lists" that
pollute the discourse in all the sci groups at the present time. The
implication is straightforward: scientific orthodoxy, in a world where
science subsists by means of government grants, simply cannot be
trusted.
That very sort of mindless groupthink is at work in space research.
Virtually everyone involved is fixated on fitting in with whatever the
established consensus happens to be in his area, so he can remain on the
federal gravy train. Result: space scientists are absurdly cautious
about endorsing, or even examining, hypotheses that deviate from
established views, and they exhibit strong antagonism toward those who
persistently advocate such hypotheses, even in cases like the present
one, where the evidence is simply overwhelming.
What do I mean by "strong antagonism"? I mean simply that you cannot
have a conversation with such people about substance, if what you are
advocating is unorthodox. No matter how hard you try to focus the
conversation on the evidence, and on the implications of the evidence,
they will try just as strongly to turn the discussion into an exchange
of insults. Your conclusion, they will insist, is due to ignorance, or
to stupidity, or to psychopathology, or to some sort of moral flaw, and
they will begin to persistently introduce such notions into the
conversation long before you have had a chance to argue your case on its
merits. And that is no accident: they see that you are attempting to
lead them into unorthodoxy--which means: into a position that will
result in loss of funding--and they do not want to hear what you have
to say. If you are correct, they do not want to know that you are
correct, because they see unorthodoxy as a sure path to a failed career.
Result: there is no way to get through to them. They will not budge, and
any power which they may have will be used to maintain the status quo,
right or wrong.
You are correct to suggest that such people are "brain dead," and that
it would be nice if we could "somehow work around" the obstacle which
they represent.
But how are we to do that?
--Mitchell Jones}***
Mitchell Jones
"OsherD" <mdoc...@comcast.net> wrote:
> >From Osher Doctorow
>
> I don't have time to check your derivations now
***{Since I didn't explain the physical basis for the barometric
formula, I assume you mean you did not take the time to verify my
calculations. Well, that's is an interesting topic. The barometric
formula is as follows:
P = P0e^-(Mgz/RT)
I chose to use it rather than the Babinet formula or one of the other
approximation formulas because it has a clear-cut physical basis. To see
why, note that any randomly selected lump of air floating in the
atmosphere has a weight, hence would fall to the ground if not
supported. But it *is* supported, because the pressure above it which
pushes it down is slightly less than the pressure below it which pushes
it up, and the net upward force due to that pressure difference is what
supports the weight of the lump. In other words, the downward pressure
on the lump from above, plus the weight of the lump, is exactly equal to
the upward air pressure exerted on the lump from below.
Consider a vertical column of air of unit cross section. If z is the
vertical coordinate, then a differentially thin section of that column
having a height dz will have a volume of 1^2dz, with the 1^2 being
included merely to indicate that the units are those of volume rather
than length. Hence if z is in meters, 1^2dz represents cubic meters; if
z is in cm, then 1^2dz represents cm^3, etc. Result: the downward
pressure exerted by the differentially thin volume, of and by itself,
will be 1^2*dz*r*g/1^2, or simply dz*r*g, where r is the density and g
is the acceleration of gravity. To that will be added the overhead
downward pressure, p(z + dz), giving a total downward pressure of p(z +
dz) + dz*r*g. And, opposing that total downward pressure and exactly
equal to it, will be the upward pressure from below, p(z). Hence we
obtain:
p(z) = p(z + dz) + dz*r*g, or
p(z + dz) - p(z) = -r*g*dz, or
dp = -r*g*dz (1
Now density, r, varies with pressure, in accordance with the ideal gas
law:
pv = NRT
In the situation we are discussing, p is the average pressure in the
column of unit cross section stretching from datum to the bottom of the
ionosphere, v is its volume (i.e., v = 1^2h, where h is the height of
the ionosphere above datum and 1^2 represents the area of a unit cross
-section), N is the number of moles of air within v, R is the amount of
energy per mole per degree of absolute temperature (called the ideal gas
constant), and T is the average absolute temperature within v.
Letting M represent the mass of a mole of air, we get:
p = NMRT/vM = (NM/v)(RT/M) = r(RT/M)
Thus average density within the column, r, is such that
r = pM/RT (2
Substituting (2 in (1 we obtain:
dp = -(Mg/RT)p*dz
Separating variables gives
dp/p = -(Mg/RT)dz
Integrating both sides gives
ln p + C1 = -Mgz/RT + C2
Letting C2 - C1 = k gives
ln p = -(Mgz/RT) + k
p = e^[-(Mgz/RT) + k] = [e^-(Mgz/RT)][e^k]
Now at z = 0, we find that p(0) = e^k , and so the above becomes
p = p0e^-(Mgz/RT)
Which, of course, is the barometric formula!
Concerning the calculation itself, the goal was to infer, based on the
known value of pressure at the higher level, the unknown value of
pressure 5000 meters further down, at the bottom of Valles Marineris. To
do that, we needed a value for T which would give answers good enough
for our purposes, and, luckily, perfect accuracy was not required.
That's fortunate because the average value of T from the bottom of
Valles Marineris to the top of the Martian stratosphere, a distance of
98,000 meters, is simply not known. To obtain it, I would have had to
know the pressure at the bottom of Valles Marineris, which was what I
was trying to calculate in the first place. If I had known that
pressure, call it p(b), then the average density of the column of
atmosphere would have been d = p(b)/98000g, and I could have obtained
the average temperature by plugging that value of d into the NASA
calculator. However, lacking p(b), I used the closest pressure I had,
which was the pressure at the generally accepted datum level, the so
called "surface." Hence the average temperature I obtained was that from
datum to the top of the stratosphere, whereas what I ideally should have
used was the average temperature from the bottom of Valles Marineris to
the top of the stratosphere. However, I did not believe that discrepancy
would affect the result very much, and so that was the approach I took.
Interestingly, this morning I checked that assumption by using it to
calculate Martian pressure at 5,000, 10,000, 15,000, 20,000, 25,000, and
30,000 meters, and the results I got were virtually identical to those
given by the NASA calculator for those altitudes. Thus the NASA
calculator seems to assume about the same average temperature as I
obtained.
Bottom line: my calculation is sure to be wrong, but it isn't wrong by
enough to matter. That means the laws of physics, beyond a shred of a
doubt, permit a lake of liquid water to exist at the bottom of Valles
Marineris, and it means the extreme resistance to that conclusion which
is certain to emerge, will not be based on the evidence.
--Mitchell Jones}***
, but Mars and Titan
> have become more interesting than the days of Sputnik (which I also
> remember).
***{Indeed they have, though Titan is a bit cold for my taste. A
possible ocean of gasoline, though, does have a certain appeal,
especially considering the price that I paid when I filled up my truck
yesterday! --MJ}***
> Let's not lose the momentum this time.
***{If only it were possible to make meaningful progress toward space
colonization. Unfortunately, given the hidebound resistance to new ideas
which seems to be an inescapable consequence of government funding of
science, I frankly see no way to get there from here. The reality is
that virtually all of those involved in space exploration are
conditioned to resist unorthodox ideas with might and main, and I quite
frankly see no way to get past their obstructionism. Meaningful progress
only comes when unorthodox ideas are given a hearing on their merits,
and, when proven correct, are permitted to enter the mainstream. That
can't happen when space science is in the hands of people who are
determined to continue to view things as they have viewed them in the
past, and whose conservatism is so intense that they are virtually
impervious to reason. I will, of course, be happy to be proven wrong,
but I do not expect that to happen. --MJ}***
> Osher Doctorow
Rodrigo Brito
>
> --Mitchell Jones}***
Well, it happens that 99% of all mankind is the way you just described. Very
conservative, or orthodox to use the same words.
The general paradigm of the common folk is very small.
If one thing is the way the majority of the population think it is, then it
must be the right way to see it and even research things into that path...
but it turns out that this is generaly true. Expectacular events are very
rare to happen and to change the way people see the world everyday would be
nonsense.
One cannot say people are just brain dead because they state they are right
and we are not... (I never saw a person being stuburn with itself)
We don't have grants to make research in some areas (Europe), and things
still take the way a few invented things in the first place (think
software/hardware).
Sometimes something big comes trough...
Sadly enough for some... not everyday... but it's the way we are and the way
the world works!!
You would have to fight the world!! :)
Rodrigo Brito
Mitchell Jones
>
> > In article <1111952664.5...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> > extra...@comcast.net wrote:
> >
>
> conservative, or orthodox to use the same words. The general paradigm of the
> common folk is very small. If one thing is the way the majority of the
> population think it is, then it must be the right way to see it and even
> research things into that path... but it turns out that this is generaly
> true. Expectacular events are very rare to happen and to change the way
> people see the world everyday would be nonsense. One cannot say people are
> just brain dead because they state they are right and we are not...
***{Of course not, and I'm not saying that. It's a question of how they
formed the opinions which they claim are "right." If the opinions are
based on applying reason to the relevant evidence, that's one thing; but
if they are based on irrelevant considerations such as how they will be
perceived by others, whether they will hurt their chances of obtaining
grant money, a university position, keeping their jobs, etc., then
that's quite another matter. In short, I was criticizing people who form
their opinions based on social expediency rather than reason. And the
term "brain dead" was a metaphor, rather than something intended
literally. I am sure that if EEG's were done on such people, brain
activity would be detected. My point, instead, is that the manner in
which such people form their opinions is defective, and in a rational
world such a defect would disqualify them for holding any sorts of
scientific credentials at all. Even in the present madhouse of a world,
in fact, they are not really scientists. "Fake scientists" would be the
accurate label, truth be told. --MJ}***
(I never
> saw a person being stuburn with itself)
>
> We don't have grants to make research in some areas (Europe)
***{It is true that there are some differences between the American and
European ways of doing science, but government is up to its eyeballs in
science in both places. Whether the differences favor the European way
over the American is unclear. I guess we will find out shortly, when we
see whether the ESA brushes the Reull Vallis Lake photo aside by
attributing all the evidence to "false color," as NASA is almost certain
to do. --MJ}***
, and things
> still take the way a few invented things in the first place (think
> software/hardware).
>
> Sometimes something big comes trough... Sadly enough for some... not
> everyday... but it's the way we are and the way the world works!!
>
> You would have to fight the world!! :)
***{Nah, I just laugh at it instead. :-)
As a matter of related interest, I have received a number of e-mails
from Americans, mostly in university environments, who have brought my
posts about the Reull Vallis Lake to the attention of supposed American
"Mars experts." To a man they have reflexively brushed off the photo as
"false color," without bothering to investigate the matter in any
detail. Here is an edited version of a reply I sent off to one of those
folks earlier tonight:
[Begin quote.]
Hi.
I was not surprised when your "experts" attributed what is surely a lake
on Mars to "false color." In fact, long before I posted anything about
the Reull Vallis Lake, I posted the following (in reference to the photo
at http://sciforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=3999):
"Wow! Has that been retouched? If not, that's one of the most
spectacular Mars photos I've ever seen! Of especial interest is what
appears to be a pool of liquid water showing at the far right of the
photo. Using the scale shown, the location of the pool is 129 km down
from the top edge, and 22 km in from the right edge. It looks like a
nice blue pool of water! And I see other apparent pools elsewhere, all
of them down in the low areas, some obscured by fog. The NASA folks, of
course, will explain it all away. "It's just another one of them pesky
false color photos," they will say. That's their standard comment
whenever lots of green or blue jumps out at the "lay" observer."
If you would be interested in a detailed explanation of why I expected
my various arguments to be dismissed by "experts" before I ever posted
them, read the article I sent to the same thread Monday morning.
My view: it's a lake. Period. There aren't any ifs, ands, or buts about
it. The shading of bluegreen to blueviolet to black in the depths of the
lake is like a fingerprint, a smoking gun signature of light absorption
in water. Given the clearly apparent water line, the slight dimming of
the light even in the shallow areas of the lake, the blurry region
suggestive of a plume of rising warm water, the clearly visible (and
enormous) hydrothermal vent running along the bottom, the fact that the
pressure calcs support the possibility of water at that location, the
bizarre, brightly colored mineral deposits all around, the fact that the
lake hypothesis leads to an explanation of the entire Vallles Marineris
canyon system, etc., any other interpretation of that photo verges on
the nonsensical. To attribute such a constellation of facts to "false
color" is to postulate a miracle. Witches will ride brooms before that
is anything other than a lake on Mars.
I don't know whether you agree, of course, but if you do, don't waste
your time fighting with the "Mars experts" about it. If you persist, you
will quickly uncover the "hysterical antagonism" and the vile personal
abuse that "experts" use nowadays to discourage heretics, and you will
put your career in jeopardy. Me, I just sit back and laugh at the
idiots, and let them keep their heads in the sand. It's enough to see
them for what they are and to feel the smug sense of self-satisfaction
that results from not sharing their flaws. :-)
Mitchell Jones
[End quote.]
Bottom line: we don't have to be idiots, and we don't have to let idiots
pull us down, which will surely happen if we attempt to "fight the
world." Just recognize reality: 98.4% of the human genome is identical
to that of the chimpanzee--which means: we don't need a space ship to
get to the planet of the apes, because we are already there! Recognize
that, and dedicate your life to rising as far above those roots as you
can, and you will find one day that you are happy in spite of the sad
state of the species from which you came!
--Mitchell Jones}***
>
> Rodrigo Brito
>
> >
> > --Mitchell Jones}***
***{Note: I was having server difficulty last night, so I posted this
via Google. However, they deleted all the groups except sci.physics, and
so I am posting it again now that my newsgroup server is back up. It
will be duplicated in sci.physics, of course, so I apologize for that.
Any replies in that group, however, should be to this version rather
than the earlier one, since if you reply to the Google version the other
groups--and they are relevant groups--will be deleted. --MJ}***
Claus-Jürgen Heigl
> As a matter of related interest, I have received a number of e-mails
> from Americans, mostly in university environments, who have brought my
> posts about the Reull Vallis Lake to the attention of supposed American
> "Mars experts."
I forwarded the points raised in this thread to D. Moehlmann, that's the
scientist who wrote the topical article which was linked in the
beginning of this thread. If he finds the time, he will write something
about it right here.
Regards,
Claus-Juergen
Mitchell Jones
Claus-Jürgen Heigl <un...@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de> wrote:
***{Thanks. As it happens, I have already sent Dr. Moehlmann a link to
the discussion, plus some photos I have which, in my opinion, fit very
well with his theory about adsorption water. I would be very interested
in his comments on those photos as well. The link I sent, unfortunately,
was to the Google group that I had to use when my server was down,
though I did mention to him that the discussion was on sci.physics.
Hopefully he will respond on sci.physics directly, since that will
ensure that all four of the listed newsgroups will receive his comments.
Turning back to the barometric formula, I would add to my earlier
remarks one point: I spent a lot of time working out various
possibilities before I decided that liquid water could undoubtedly exist
under those conditions, and most of the things I considered were not
mentioned in my posts, because the posts were very lengthy and replete
with formulae already. (It has been said that every equation you include
in an article costs you half of your readership, and, horribly, that
seems to be true even in science groups.)
Among other things, I tried values for T up to 293 K, considered the
effect of using an average value for g, and also considered the likely
lowering of the freezing point of water due to the fact that the water
in the lake was likely to be at saturation in terms of multiple solutes.
(Think antifreeze! :-) I also used the value for p that I found based on
the assumption that T = 200 K (which was 1132.18 Pa) and turned around
and solved the equation for T (using p0 = 1132.18 Pa and p = 700 Pa),
then used the new T iteratively to find a new value for p, etc. The
bottom line on all of that work was simple: the laws of physics permit a
lake of liquid water to exist under the conditions that hold at the
bottom of Valles Marineris, and there aren't any ifs, ands, or buts
about it. No values for any of the parameters that are reasonable
possibilities support any other conclusion.
The most important of those considerations, as a matter of interest, is
simply this: the lower the average value of T, the higher the pressure
at the bottom of the canyon. (I know this will seem intuitively
implausible to some. If it does, I invite you to plug in some numbers
and satisfy yourself that it is so.) It is that insight, more than any
other, which convinced me that the average value of T would not change
very much if the unknown values deep down in a cold, dark canyon were
taken into account. As I said earlier, witches will ride brooms before
what we see in that photo is anything other than a lake on Mars.
--Mitchell Jones}***
Mitchell Jones
Mitchell Jones <mjo...@21cenlogic.com> wrote:
[snip]
> ***{I hate to respond to my own stuff, but sometimes a follow-up is
> necessary. After posting the above, I read my e-mail, and found a
> message from Dr. Moehlmann, in which he mentioned that PFS measurements
> show the temperature in the canyon above the fog to be--are you
> ready?--200 K! That is exactly the value I used in my calculations! Thus
> no tweaking of the value of T will be required. The calculation is spot
> on. And, of course, the lakes at the bottom of the canyon will not
> freeze, because they contain hydrothermal vent water, heated by
> underground geological sources. (In Yellowstone, for example, hundreds
> of hot springs remain liquid throughout bitter winters, even when there
> are many feet of snow on the ground.) Thus the low temps are a good
> thing: they mean the pressure at the bottom of the canyon will be
> higher, hence that liquid water can exist at higher temperatures than
> would be the case if the atmospheric pressure were lower.
>
> Bottom line: the case is closed. That's a lake of liquid water in Reull
> Vallis. Period. End of story.
>
> --Mitchell Jones}***
***{Yes, Virginia, there is a supervolcano under Valles Marineris. :-)
--MJ}***
chosp
"Mitchell Jones" <mjo...@21cenlogic.com> wrote in message
news:mjones-2FCCF0....@spectator.sj.sys.us.xo.net...
> Bottom line: the case is closed. That's a lake of liquid water in Reull
> Vallis.
Speculation on your part.
> Period. End of story.
Guess again.
bz
DAC12F.141...@spectator.sj.sys.us.xo.net:
Don't want to throw a wet blanket on things but I found a site
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/MENUS/marineris_list.html
that has a few 'colorized' pictures of Marineris.
It warns that the colors do NOT represent true colors.
It is possible that the image that started this thread is such an image.
On the other hand, there is one labled "Wide Angle Color Image of Valles
Marineris" that does NOT warn that the colors are not true. Unfortunately,
it is not as spectacular as the one that started this thread.
I hope the water is real.
--
bz
please pardon my infinite ignorance, the set-of-things-I-do-not-know is an
infinite set.
bz...@ch100-5.chem.lsu.edu remove ch100-5 to avoid spam trap
Mitchell Jones
Mitchell Jones <mjo...@21cenlogic.com> wrote:
***{I hate to respond to my own stuff, but sometimes a follow-up is
Jan Panteltje
<bz...@ch100-5.chem.lsu.edu> wrote in
<Xns962999991B615WQ...@130.39.198.139>:
>
>On the other hand, there is one labled "Wide Angle Color Image of Valles
>Marineris" that does NOT warn that the colors are not true. Unfortunately,
>it is not as spectacular as the one that started this thread.
>
>I hope the water is real.
http://www.esa.int/export/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEMAZ625WVD_1.html
says it is made with stereo color camera.
Look at the big TIF high resolution, it is almost if you can see
bottom structures and rock in the water, and what is the GREEN????
Remember plant chlorophyl spectra have been observed in the past by the
Russians.
So, too bad for the creationists... life is likely everywhere it gets a chance.
Jarmo Korteniemi
At least I haven't noticed them - I have to admit that I didn't read through
all the stuff you wrote, Mitchell. The messages were loooong. :)
Anyway: The sensitivity of the different HRSC color channels varies. You might
notice that if you look at the raw images (available somewhere in the ESA web
chaos*) from which the 'color' images are derived from. You get the appr.
wavelength curves from the HRSC portion of ESA SP-1240, available at
h€ttp://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=34885
But still, this doesn't give you the correlation between the color channels.
I should be aware of any such c€orrelatios, since I am working in the HRSC
Science team, and to my knowledge no accuate correlations have been achieved.
In other words, the colors in the images have not been retouched as such, but
the "blue" you see in the imges is just _bluer_ than the rest. I bet there is
considerable stretching in the histograms of the original images for PR
purposes, i.e. to _emphasize_ the features seen in the image. Thus, the fog in
Valles Marineris is, yes, bluer and brighter than the ground. And yes, the
Reull Vallis center is brighter in blue channel and darker in red and green
channels. But no, it is NOT as blue in real life as shown in the PR image, and
no, I can not see any kind of lake in the close-up images. You have to
remember that the original HRSC images (which I am looking at as I write this)
are up to 20 meters/pixel in that region, and even better resolution MOC
narrow angle images* go up to 2 m/pixel. And there is no indication of a
liquid surface in those images. There are indications of formations carved or
otherwise created by liquid flowing matter, however.
* If you want the web addresses for these, I'll give you them. Don't have time
to search the idiotically arranged web sites now... :)
Jarmo
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Jarmo Korteniemi * http://www.student.oulu.fi/~jkorteni *
Planetology group, Astronomy, University of Oulu, Finland
s-posti / email: jarmo DOT#1 korteniemi AT oulu DOT#2 fi
puhelin / phone: +358 (45) 6362264
huone / room: TÄ215 (klo 12-20, ajoittain aiemminkin)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Do you believe in astrology? Jupiter exerts less gravitational influence
over a human body than does an angry rhino less than two meters away...
Jan Panteltje
Korteniemi <aa....@see.dee.ee> wrote in <d2f5rg$47g$1...@news.oulu.fi>:
>I have to raise a couple of points which haven't been taken into account yet.
>At least I haven't noticed them - I have to admit that I didn't read through
>all the stuff you wrote, Mitchell. The messages were loooong. :)
>
>Anyway: The sensitivity of the different HRSC color channels varies. You might
>notice that if you look at the raw images (available somewhere in the ESA web
>chaos*) from which the 'color' images are derived from. You get the appr.
>wavelength curves from the HRSC portion of ESA SP-1240, available at
>h€ttp://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=34885
>But still, this doesn't give you the correlation between the color channels.
>I should be aware of any such c€orrelatios, since I am working in the HRSC
>Science team, and to my knowledge no accuate correlations have been achieved.
>
>In other words, the colors in the images have not been retouched as such, but
>the "blue" you see in the imges is just _bluer_ than the rest. I bet there is
>considerable stretching in the histograms of the original images for PR
>purposes, i.e. to _emphasize_ the features seen in the image. Thus, the fog in
>Valles Marineris is, yes, bluer and brighter than the ground. And yes, the
>Reull Vallis center is brighter in blue channel and darker in red and green
>channels. But no, it is NOT as blue in real life as shown in the PR image, and
>no, I can not see any kind of lake in the close-up images.
I took the large tif and cut out and enlarged the part I think you need to look at.
Make sure you turn brightnes up a lot on the monitor.
ftp://panteltje.com/pub/mars/lake-on-mars-ob_22_reull_v2-detail.jpg
As for the PR coloring, you will have a VERY hard time explaining how you can
get green in the blue channel locally.
I take you on on that anytime.
I know my color stuff.
Claus-Jürgen Heigl
> Bottom line: the case is closed. That's a lake of liquid water in Reull
> Vallis. Period. End of story.
I think it is much too early to tell. The HRSC is capable of doing
near-infrared and we don't know which colour channels were used. It
could also be that the blue in the picture is not as blue as we think.
There may be other explanations for the colour, like mineral deposits.
I'm sure the scientists analysing the pictures see what we see, and in
consequence they didn't announce "liquid water on Mars!". That means
either they don't think it's water or they are still working on the
picture.
I think it is necessary to have more data for us to judge the issue.
Let's see if the scientists speak and what.
Claus-Juergen
Mitchell Jones
Jarmo Korteniemi <aa....@see.dee.ee> wrote:
***{The issue regarding the colors is not about your camera, which I am
sure was as accurate as was available for the money budgeted at the time
of purchase. What this is about is physics. Specifically, it is about
the physics of light absorption in water.
Let me try to explain by means of an analogy. Suppose we are about to
have a footrace. The race requires you to run dead out. If you fall
behind the pack, you are disqualified. There are 5 world-class runners
lined up. The runner on the left is wearing a red uniform. The guy next
to him is wearing orange. The next guy wears yellow. Then there is a
runner wearing green. And next to him there is a guy wearing blue. Now
the guy in red is weakest. He will fall on his face after running 5000
meters. The guy in orange is only a little better. He can only run 6000
meters. The guy in yellow is still better. He can go 7000 meters. The
guy in green is pretty stout: he can go 8000 meters. And the guy in blue
is the strongest. He can run 9000 meters.
The requirements of the race are to run to a wall, grab a flag the same
color as your uniform, and carry it back to the finish line. Who will
complete the race? The answer: it depends on the distance to the wall.
Since the runners have to run to the wall and then back, the total
distance is twice the distance to the wall. Thus if the wall is less
than 5000/2 = 2500 meters, then all the runners will finish. But if the
distance is a bit less than 6000/2 = 3000 meters, then everybody will
finish but the guy in red. And if the distance to the wall is a bit less
than 7000/2 =3500 meters, then red and orange will drop out, and only
yellow, green, and blue will finish. And if the distance is a bit less
than 8000/2 = 4000 meters, then only green and blue will finish. And,
finally, if the distance to the wall is a bit less than 9000/2 = 4500
meters, then only blue will finish.
Now imagine that the race is between photons instead of people, and that
they are running through water toward the bottom of a lake. We know that
the absorption coefficients are higher for the longer wavelengths. It's
basic physics. Result: if the bottom of the lake is close enough, all
wavelengths will make it to the bottom and back to the surface again,
and thence to the camera. But if it is a bit deeper, the red won't make
it, so only the orange, yellow, green, and blue will come back to the
camera. And, deeper still, only yellow, green, and blue will make it
back. And then, even deeper, only green and blue will make it back, then
only blue (actually blueviolet, since violet and blue have pretty much
the same absorption coefficients), then, even deeper, no light will make
it back from the lake bottom, and you will see only black.
What this means is that when the lake is fairly shallow, the full
spectrum, or almost the full spectrum, will make it back to the camera,
and the bottom will show an approximation of its true color, which is
yellow, in this case. But as the water gets deeper and deeper,
absorption will cause the longer wavelengths of light streaming in from
the sun to be progressively eliminated. Result: the color of the bottom
will gradually change as the lake gets deeper and deeper, appearing to
be yellow-blue-green, then bluegreen, then blue, then black, as the
bottom drops off into the depths.
And, of course, that is exactly what the image shows.
Are you going to tell me that your camera is designed to deliberately
color code depth in that way? If so, why did it not do that elsewhere in
the photo? Why did the depths get color coded only in the area that
looks like a lake?
The answer, obviously, is that your camera was not designed to color
code depth. Indeed, your camera has no idea of the distance traveled by
the individual photons that enter its lens, and no such automatic color
coding of depth is even possible. Instead, mother nature took care of
the color coding, by invoking absorption coefficients for water that
were directly proportional to the wavelengths of the incident light.
Mother nature ensured that water would absorb red most strongly of all,
then orange, then yellow, then green, and then blue. The result is the
gradual change in the color of the bottom with increasing depth which we
see in the photo. And the color coding only appears in the area that
looks like a lake, because that's where the water is in the photo. That
pattern, in fact, is like a fingerprint, a smoking gun if you will,
indicating the absorption of light due to passage through water.
Bottom line: Witches will ride brooms before that's anything other than
a lake on Mars.
--Mitchell Jones}***
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
Bob Harrington
> Bottom line: Witches will ride brooms before that's anything other
> than a lake on Mars.
If that ~is~ liquid water, or even a thin sheet of clear ice floating on
water, the simple test would be to look for specular surface reflections
from the sun. Shouldn't be hard for NASA or ESA to arrange a photo pass
or two looking for same.
Lack of such reflections would surely put a small dent in your theory,
unless Mars has some new form of "matte" water...
Or would it just be another government coverup?
Jarmo Korteniemi
> I took the large tif and cut out and enlarged the part I think you need to look at.
> Make sure you turn brightnes up a lot on the monitor.
> ftp://panteltje.com/pub/mars/lake-on-mars-ob_22_reull_v2-detail.jpg
I looked at it. There's a dark blob in the middle. So? I still don't see any
evidence of a lake. I see a _false-color_ or _exaggerated-color_ image with
reduced resolution. Because of the reduced resolution I can not make out any
details which would speak on behalf of a lake.
> As for the PR coloring, you will have a VERY hard time explaining how you can
> get green in the blue channel locally.
Err... I don't know how to get "green in the blue channel", locally or otherwise.
I do, however, know, that the area has been imaged by four different wavelength
ccd's on HRSC: red, green, blue, and near-IR. The PR image you see on the net
has been composed of these images (probably blue, green with IR or red as the
third, I don't know).
If you take the cut-out you referred above, and look at it's different color
channels, you can see that especially the blue channel has lots of artifacts.
The reason for this is unknown, but it seems that the blue channel images
become better the longer it is on, hence the reason may be the warming of the
instrument - or something completely different. But, anyway, the greenish
stripe you see in the middle of the dark-blue area, is a location of such a
vertical artifact stripe in the blue channel. It is recognized as an artifact
because it is exactly vertical and has abnormally straight edges, and differs
considerably from the surroundings, and because it is parallel to other
similar stripes nearby. Additionally, the green channel has a slightly
brighter area than its surroundings, which is apparently not an artefact,
almost exactly at the same place. This results in a greenish region. Just as
the areas which surround the dark area in the middle.
> I take you on on that anytime.
> I know my color stuff.
I see. Just remember that the image is a false color image. The blue you see
there is NOT the real color. So dark blue in the image is not dark blue when
looked at with human eyes.
I'll get back to you on the false-colour images in a bit. Now I have a meeting
to go to.
Cheers!
Vendicar Decarian
"Mitchell Jones" <mjo...@21cenlogic.com> wrote in message
news:mjones-2FCCF0....@spectator.sj.sys.us.xo.net...
> Bottom line: the case is closed. That's a lake of liquid water in Reull
> Vallis. Period. End of story.
Bahahahahahahahahahah!
Jan Panteltje
Korteniemi <aa....@see.dee.ee> wrote in <d2gm6j$eia$1...@news.oulu.fi>:
>In alt.sci.planetary <1112223237.d7070a3fe687eb4eadc7b18aa368b9cd@teranews> stated that:
>> I took the large tif and cut out and enlarged the part I think you need to look at.
>> Make sure you turn brightens up a lot on the monitor.
>> ftp://panteltje.com/pub/mars/lake-on-mars-ob_22_reull_v2-detail.jpg
>
>I looked at it. There's a dark blob in the middle.
You need to adjust the brightness (not contrast) way up on the monitor.
You will see blue with black areas, and green in it, and around it.
>So? I still don't see any evidence of a lake.
I will step a bit ahead (have read all of your text first), and try to explain.
You say 'false color image'.
Then in the same text you say 'made with 3 wavelength, RGB and UV.'
Now that sort of contradicts itself.
When we look at the 3D effect, possibly enhanced (for PR reasons) by some
color changes, (if that is the case), then say if they did:
lowest level = black
next level up = blue
higher = green,
even higher = green yellow..
Strange choice, and it cannot be that way.
It cannot be, because the black areas in the blue 'lake', do NOT show
this 3D enhanced effect (remember it is a stereo camera).
So we can say black and blue are at the same height.
So the colors must really represent COLORS.
Deep water would be black, shallow water would be blue (has been
explained here already).
As far as the UV sensor goes, we do not know how much it contributed,
but I would assign it to blue, as it is on that side of the spectrum.
Maybe UV channel was not even used.
It contradicts nothing if it was.
So we have likely a flat (waveless) water area with some deep places,
with some rocks sticking above the surface (clearly the stereo camera
does its jobs here), and some green on some of the higher areas that
could be plant life.
I do not know how they made 'white balance' so what is reddish on the higher
areas may be an other color.
Really unless it was an 'artist impression' painted by hand, everything here
points to water surrounded by land with some vegetation.
>I see. Just remember that the image is a false color image.
I think I have addressed that point.
>The blue you see
>there is NOT the real color. So dark blue in the image is not dark blue when
>looked at with human eyes.
Oh, the blue sensor was not responding to blue but some other color?
Now that cannot be.
As for the 'vertical' artefact, I have worked with cameras for 37 years,
many types of sensors, and none of these cause artefacts like these.
In fact the artefacts are not vertical at all (as you claim).
The left side of some green area ALMOST is, but the right side is a 110
degrees angle.
We can safely rule aout transmission artefacts (noise) too here I think.
As for exposure times for the different sensors, that would not make a lot
of difference and be equaled out by white balancing, and only increase noise
in some color channel.
I do not see a lot of noise at all..
>I'll get back to you on the false-color images in a bit.
Nice, very curious!
Jan Panteltje
ftp://panteltje.com/pub/mars/lake-on-mars-ob_22_reull_v2-detail-gamma.jpg
Now with normal monitor settings you can see the black and blue lake, and the
green area that you call 'artifact' has a nice insert with a rock surrounded
by water.
There are some more big rocks above the water surface more south.
12 meter / pixel, so 5 pixels = 60 meter diameter for the rocky areas.
You can sit on these and try for fish if you like ;-)
LOL
bz
news:1112274691.c3d82db7de30276b2b6a713b17dbb480@teranews:
> ftp://panteltje.com/pub/mars/lake-on-mars-ob_22_reull_v2-detail-gamma.jpg
Not working.
Mitchell Jones
"Bob Harrington" <rch.N...@blarg.net> wrote:
***{How reflective is the surface of water at a pressure of 10 to 12
millibars? Myself, I don't know. I do know, however, that a lot more
molecules are going to be jumping through the surface in the upwards
direction, per unit area, than is the case for water at 1013 millibars,
which is sea level air pressure on Earth. Will those differences alter
the reflectivity of the surface? Do you know the answer? If so, let's
see your reference. And if not I would suggest less sarcasm and a more
open mind. --MJ}***
> Or would it just be another government coverup?
***{I don't see it as a coverup. I see it as institutional memory
operating. The last time NASA stirred up a lot of excitement vis-a-vis
space exploration was when their astronauts were walking on the moon.
Naturally, NASA supporters used the publicity to go for a bigger budget.
Result: other groups in Washington who wanted that money turned on them.
Those groups included welfare recipients, "environmentalists,"
"education," and a lengthy laundry list of well organized groups who
could put a lot of bodies on the streets on short notice, as well as
lots of lobbyists in the halls of congress. The result was a massacre in
which NASA not merely didn't get a budget increase, but actually got its
budget cut, and almost ceased to exist altogether. What they learned
from the experience was simple: don't pick a fight with groups that,
when push comes to shove, are much more powerful than you are. Instead,
always step off the sidewalk and into the gutter when your betters come
walking by. Always accept your intrinsic inferiority, where pressure
group warfare in Washington is concerned, and never attempt to be more
than you can be.
The reality, however, was that NASA had lots of fervent supporters whom
it could not control. If, in fact, a lot of public excitement developed
due to some event related to space exploration, then the reality was
that those supporters would lobby congress for a bigger NASA budget,
whether NASA administrators wanted them to do that or not. In other
words, if *excitement* developed in the press and the public due to some
event related to space exploration, whether it was an accomplishment of
NASA, ESA, or someone else, it was a threat to the very existence of the
agency, because supporters who did not understand the political
realities would pick another fight that NASA could not win. Result: for
decades, NASA administrators have had an unstated policy of discouraging
excitement vis-a-vis space exploration, by cutting off the flow of funds
to any researchers who were prone to generate excitement.
For example, do you remember the early Mars mission which put out a
scoop into the Martian soil, pulled back a lump of dirt, perfused it
with sterile nutrients, and measured byproduct gases to see if the
emanations were of the sort that might indicate life? In particular, do
you recall that the results were precisely what had been publicly
announced, prior to the mission, was to be taken as indicative of life?
I certainly do. And I also remember that, rather than make such an
announcement, NASA bigwigs went into a huddle for several days, and then
announced that the results proved that there was, in fact, no life on
Mars!
The point of all this is that institutional memory of the funding
disaster which resulted from the spectacular success associated with the
Apollo program has taken the form of a NASA culture that is
ultraconservative to the verge of insanity. They are ultracautious and
prone to downplay anything that might engender excitement, because
researchers who were not ultraconservative have been systematically
culled by means of denial of funding. The result is a form of madness,
and it is doing damage to one of the most important goals of mankind:
the goal of spreading ourselves to other places in the solar system,
and, ultimately, to other other systems around other stars. That goal is
important for a very simple and obvious reason: as long as we are
confined to Earth, we are subject to extinction. Numerous possibilities,
including asteroid impacts, large increases or decreases in solar
luminosity, nearby supernovas, erupting supervolcanos, a global collapse
of civilization due to economic blunders by governments, and Zeus only
knows what else, offer a virtual guarantee that, if we remain only on
Earth, we will eventually be wiped out.
--Mitchell Jones}***
Raymond Yohros
that place was one of the most beautiful
landscape in the universe. i can imagine
many wars took place because of it.
there will never be something as
beautiful on earth as the mariner valleys
Claus-Jürgen Heigl
>
> (Think antifreeze! :-) I also used the value for p that I found based on
> the assumption that T = 200 K (which was 1132.18 Pa) and turned around
> and solved the equation for T (using p0 = 1132.18 Pa and p = 700 Pa),
> then used the new T iteratively to find a new value for p, etc.
If the temperature is indeed 200 K (which Mr Moehlmann confirmed to me
as well), then it is impossible for water to exist in a liquid state,
regardless of pressure.
The reason is the physical property of water, which is described in its
phase diagram. Although water has an anomaly which allows it to be
liquid with temperature somewhat below the triple point at a higher
pressure, 200 K is way below the triple point of water, which is 0.01 C
(273.2 K) and 611,73 Pa.
In a supercooled state, water can be maintained liquid down to a
temperature of -39 C (234 K), that's as far as you can possibly get.
Below that, a state called dynamic arrest occurs, which means water can
no longer be liquid at all.
Of course, water on Mars wouldn't be supercooled, so it needs even
higher temperatures to be liquid. Also salinity can't bridge the
difference of 70 K.
Whatever the reason for the blue colour is, liquid water isn't.
Claus-Juergen
Jan Panteltje
<mjo...@21cenlogic.com> wrote in
<mjones-04B6BD....@spectator.sj.sys.us.xo.net>:
>important for a very simple and obvious reason: as long as we are
>confined to Earth, we are subject to extinction. Numerous possibilities,
>including asteroid impacts, large increases or decreases in solar
>luminosity, nearby supernovas, erupting supervolcanos, a global collapse
>of civilization due to economic blunders by governments, and Zeus only
>knows what else, offer a virtual guarantee that, if we remain only on
>Earth, we will eventually be wiped out.
What actually hit me, some years ago, was an interview with Steve Hawking,
the scientist (from the evaporating black holes), he had an audience with
the Pope, and the pope suggested to him that 'it would be a good idea not
to look for what happened before the big bang, as the big bang was so
convenient from a creation(ist) point of view'.
Now, I dunno if it impressed Hawking....
But it sure shows how any religion, be it some Iran leader, or some West
European religious leader, will try to avoid reality to maintain status
quo of their power.
And thus they do not REALLY care about humanities future, as neither does
the medicine man in Africa who kneels down in front of the tree worshiping
the tree god, his status in the tribe being his only worry.
Is it a coincidence that the first Sputnik came from Russia, a communist state,
where they likely were not too worried about 'entering into the heavens above'.
LOL
Mitchell Jones
Claus-Jürgen Heigl <un...@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de> wrote:
***{I'm not saying the water in the Reull Vallis Lake is at 200 K. That
would be 73 degrees below zero Celsius, or 99 below zero Fahrenheit, and
is way below any reasonable freezing point. But that was the estimated
AIR temperature above the fog in the other photo. What I'm saying is
that the WATER in the Reull Vallis Lake is from underground hydrothermal
sources, and that its temperature is elevated due to geothermal heating.
Thus we are talking about the temperature of the WATER, not about the
temperature of the AIR. As I have already pointed out several times, the
AIR in Yellowstone in mid-winter can be bitterly cold, with many feet of
snow piled on the ground, and yet the WATER in hundreds of hydrothermal
springs will still be liquid, and in many the WATER will be hot enough
to boil the flesh off of your bones.
How much is the water temperature elevated in Reull Vallis Lake? Well,
the temperature will be above the melting point of ice for that
solution, which will be waaaay below Celsius zero due to saturation with
multiple solutes. (Think antifreeze.) And the temperature will be below
the boiling point of that solution, which in the low atmospheric
pressure of Mars will be in the vicinity of 12 degrees Celsius, or about
54 degrees Fahrenheit. My guess would be that the solution in that lake
would be liquid roughly from -10 to +12 degrees Celsius. Since it is
obviously liquid now, I conclude that its temperature is somewhere in
that range. (If there is a thin skim of ice at the top, it is very thin
indeed, because we can see all the way to the bottom without any obvious
interference.)
--Mitchell Jones}***
chosp
"Bob Harrington" <rch.N...@blarg.net> wrote in message
news:UJ6dnQwD2Pl...@giganews.com...
> Mitchell Jones wrote:
>
>> Bottom line: Witches will ride brooms before that's anything other
>> than a lake on Mars.
>
> If that ~is~ liquid water, or even a thin sheet of clear ice floating on
> water, the simple test would be to look for specular surface reflections
> from the sun. Shouldn't be hard for NASA or ESA to arrange a photo pass
> or two looking for same.
It has been done. There have no specular surface reflections detected in
the area in question.
> Lack of such reflections would surely put a small dent in your theory,
Essentially, it rules it out.
chosp
"Mitchell Jones" <mjo...@21cenlogic.com> wrote in message
news:mjones-47929A....@spectator.sj.sys.us.xo.net...
> Since it is obviously liquid now,
You have never demonstrated the obviousness
of any extant liquid on the surface of Mars.
The burden remains on you to demonstrate this.
Bob Harrington
> In article <UJ6dnQwD2Pl...@giganews.com>,
> "Bob Harrington" <rch.N...@blarg.net> wrote:
>
>> Mitchell Jones wrote:
>>
>>> Bottom line: Witches will ride brooms before that's anything other
>>> than a lake on Mars.
>>
>> If that ~is~ liquid water, or even a thin sheet of clear ice
>> floating on water, the simple test would be to look for specular
>> surface reflections from the sun. Shouldn't be hard for NASA or ESA
>> to arrange a photo pass or two looking for same.
>>
>> Lack of such reflections would surely put a small dent in your
>> theory, unless Mars has some new form of "matte" water...
>
> ***{How reflective is the surface of water at a pressure of 10 to 12
> millibars? Myself, I don't know. I do know, however, that a lot more
> molecules are going to be jumping through the surface in the upwards
> direction, per unit area, than is the case for water at 1013
> millibars, which is sea level air pressure on Earth. Will those
> differences alter the reflectivity of the surface? Do you know the
> answer? If so, let's see your reference. And if not I would suggest
> less sarcasm and a more open mind. --MJ}***
If the surface is indeed boiling, then you lose a lot of the clarity you
claim to be seeing - try reading the date on a coin on the bottom of a
pot of boiling water. If it is merely rapid evaporation, then the
surface is still smooth enough to cast specular reflections.
As to open minds, there is such a thing as ~too~ open... for example:
making assumptions about something that one does not have all available
information for (i.e. how much manipulation has been done on the image
in question?), and then making concrete conclusions based on those
assumptions (your definitive claim that this can ~only~ be open, clear
water.)
I took this photo of the moon that proves it has been attacked by clowns
with paint cans:
http://home.comcast.net/~bobqatphotos/2004-12-27_Moon_Saturated.jpg
Or not. It is actually just this natural color image of the moon -
http://home.comcast.net/~bobqatphotos/2004-12-27_Moon.jpg
- that I used Photoshop's saturation tool to absurdly stretch the very
subtle color variations on the moon (and likely some camera sensor noise
as well).
Most images produced for public consumption by NASA and ESA have had
some - or much - color and contrast manipulation applied, both for
enhancement of details, and for just plain 'wow factor' intended to
attract the very public interest you suggest they disdain below... The
details of that manipulation are not always made clear, and sometimes
omitted entirely - a pet peeve I've held for decades.
From my own experience in image manipulation, the Mars image in question
shows obvious signs of both contrast and saturation enhancement. Were
you able to view the same Martian scene with your own unaided eyes, you
would most likely see little more than variations in reddish rock and
dust, with some slightly darker, coarser sands in the lowest parts of
the valley just as occur in many other places on Mars.
But wouldn't 'definitive proof' of a huge standing body of liquid water
on Mars be just the thing to upstage one's 'betters'? I now begin to
doubt your understanding of the bureaucratic mindset as well... ;^}
> For example, do you remember the early Mars mission which put out a
> scoop into the Martian soil, pulled back a lump of dirt, perfused it
> with sterile nutrients, and measured byproduct gases to see if the
> emanations were of the sort that might indicate life? In particular,
> do you recall that the results were precisely what had been publicly
> announced, prior to the mission, was to be taken as indicative of
> life? I certainly do. And I also remember that, rather than make such
> an announcement, NASA bigwigs went into a huddle for several days,
> and then announced that the results proved that there was, in fact,
> no life on Mars!
I recall that there were slightly ambiguous results from the test,
subsequent study showing that there were non-biological processes that
could also have produced the same outcome. It's been a while, I don't
have links to those studies handy.
> The point of all this is that institutional memory of the funding
> disaster which resulted from the spectacular success associated with
> the Apollo program has taken the form of a NASA culture that is
> ultraconservative to the verge of insanity. They are ultracautious and
> prone to downplay anything that might engender excitement, because
> researchers who were not ultraconservative have been systematically
> culled by means of denial of funding. The result is a form of madness,
> and it is doing damage to one of the most important goals of mankind:
> the goal of spreading ourselves to other places in the solar system,
> and, ultimately, to other other systems around other stars. That goal
> is important for a very simple and obvious reason: as long as we are
> confined to Earth, we are subject to extinction. Numerous
> possibilities, including asteroid impacts, large increases or
> decreases in solar luminosity, nearby supernovas, erupting
> supervolcanos, a global collapse of civilization due to economic
> blunders by governments, and Zeus only knows what else, offer a
> virtual guarantee that, if we remain only on Earth, we will
> eventually be wiped out.
I also recall a 'scientist' back in 1996 or so who saw a blob on a photo
of the then inbound comet Hale-Bopp, neglected to use his sky mapping
software properly so as to identify the fact that it was merely a faint
star his software didn't show - and instead made several amazing leaps
of logic to conclude that since the blob was adjacent to the comet in
his image, it was therefore also at the same distance - and thus must be
an alien craft following the comet into the solar system. Subsequently,
three dozen and change other 'open-minded' folks in San Diego bought new
athletic shoes and thumbed a ride on the mothership via sedatives,
vodka, and plastic bags over their heads...
Even if humanity spreads from Earth, we only postpone our final
annihilation as the Universe approaches absolute entropy and our very
protons decay... ;^)
In the meanwhile, I support enthusiastic but logical expansion of our
exploration of the solar system and beyond. NASA and ESA are already
providing some spectacular results from Mars and Saturn, and via the
Great Observatories, glimpses of the wonders beyond.
Bob ^,,^
Jarmo Korteniemi
stated that:
> On a sunny day (Thu, 31 Mar 2005 11:16:35 +0000 (UTC)) it happened Jarmo
> Korteniemi <aa....@see.dee.ee> wrote in <d2gm6j$eia$1...@news.oulu.fi>:
> >In alt.sci.planetary <1112223237.d7070a3fe687eb4eadc7b18aa368b9cd@teranews>
stated that:
> >> I took the large tif and cut out and enlarged the part I think you need
to look at.
> >> Make sure you turn brightens up a lot on the monitor.
> >> ftp://panteltje.com/pub/mars/lake-on-mars-ob_22_reull_v2-detail.jpg
> >I looked at it. There's a dark blob in the middle.
> You need to adjust the brightness (not contrast) way up on the monitor.
> You will see blue with black areas, and green in it, and around it.
Yes. I did. Saw it. The first time. Black, blue, green, yellowish.
> >So? I still don't see any evidence of a lake.
> I will step a bit ahead (have read all of your text first), and try to
explain.
> You say 'false color image'.
> Then in the same text you say 'made with 3 wavelength, RGB and UV.'
> Now that sort of contradicts itself.
Read again (see also [***] below for a dummy-example):
The area was imaged with four wavelengths: red, blue, green and near-IR (not
UV). Each channel produces a gray-scale image, which represents the intensity
of each pixel in the given wavelength. Additionally the area was probably
imaged with four panchromatic (also gray-scale) channels to achieve the stereo
effect. But they are not the issue here - the colors are. The PR image was
first composed of THREE of those FOUR color channels. Probably the ones used
were G, B, and R. The R channel may have been replaced by the near-IR, because
the images themselves are quite similar.
Let's assume that the colors were compiled using the R, G and B channels. In
order to get a _real-color_ image, you would have to adjust the individual
channels to match the intensity how the eye sees those wavelengths, right?
Well, we have no way of doing that, at the moment. Additionally, the
panchromatic channels were used to achieve the 3D effect. The 3D effect was
achieved independently (and more accurately than) from the colors.
The image is enhanced. In other words, e.g. the contrasts of the used images
were stretched to get the 'cool-looking' most astonishing differences of each
channel to plain view. This is normal procedure when working with astronomical
and satellite images.
Let me show you what I mean with hypothetical histograms on three channels:
Original image histograms (left=dark, right=bright, height=intensity)
Red: .......||||||||..
Gre: .||||||||........
Blu: |||.......||||||.
Individually enhanced channels user in the resulting RGB image:
Red: .| | | | | | | |.
Gre: | | | | | | | |..
Blu: |||.. | | | | .
In the above (very crude) example are three images. If the original images
were to be used to create a color image, the result would be very bright
in red, very dark in green, and intermediate in blue. But, as the image is
enhanced, we get somewhat equal distribution for the three colors due to
histogram stretching.
> When we look at the 3D effect, possibly enhanced (for PR reasons) by some
> color changes, (if that is the case), then say if they did:
> lowest level = black
> next level up = blue
> higher = green,
> even higher = green yellow..
> Strange choice, and it cannot be that way.
> It cannot be, because the black areas in the blue 'lake', do NOT show
> this 3D enhanced effect (remember it is a stereo camera).
I'm not sure I follow you. If you mean that the lowest topography is occupied
by the seemingly black material, and going upwards it is followed by blue,
green and the highest areas are yellowish. I see no reason why this could NOT
or on the other hand SHOULD be the case...? Either way is quite possible. The
colors may or may not be dependent of the topography. See below.
> So we can say black and blue are at the same height.
> So the colors must really represent COLORS.
> Deep water would be black, shallow water would be blue (has been
> explained here already).
> So we have likely a flat (waveless) water area with some deep places,
> with some rocks sticking above the surface (clearly the stereo camera
> does its jobs here), and some green on some of the higher areas that
> could be plant life.
So what you are saying is that since the black and blue colors seem to
occupy the same elevation, they _must_ represent water? Why? As far as
I know, even plain rocks, different from each other, are of different
color because of e.g. salt content. Why couldn't the central parts
(black) be of different composition from the surrounding parts? What
evidence do you have for liquid state matter in that region, _besides_
the apparent color difference?
All I am going to say about vegetation, is that 1) why should it be green,
2) haven't you ever seen green rocks and 3) it's false-color... :)
> I do not know how they made 'white balance' so what is reddish on the higher
> areas may be an other color.
> Really unless it was an 'artist impression' painted by hand, everything here
> points to water surrounded by land with some vegetation.
> >The blue you see
> >there is NOT the real color. So dark blue in the image is not dark blue
when
> >looked at with human eyes.
> Oh, the blue sensor was not responding to blue but some other color?
> Now that cannot be.
[***]
Can you imagine looking at a spruce tree through red, green and blue filters?
With plain eyes it seems of course green. Through the red filter it seems
quite dark. Through the blue filter it seems intermediate, and through green
filter it is bright. You can enhance the red channel so that its (originally
dark) gray-scale histogram now stretches all the way from black to bright
white. Then, combining this image with the original untouched gray and blue
channels, it's magic: the tree seems RED!!! Weird, huh...? That's how you get
a false-color image.
> As for the 'vertical' artefact, I have worked with cameras for 37 years,
> many types of sensors, and none of these cause artefacts like these.
> In fact the artefacts are not vertical at all (as you claim).
> The left side of some green area ALMOST is, but the right side is a 110
> degrees angle.
> We can safely rule aout transmission artefacts (noise) too here I think.
I'll get you the original images in a while so you see what I mean. Hold
yer horses, have to dig for a while.
> As for exposure times for the different sensors, that would not make a lot
> of difference and be equaled out by white balancing, and only increase
noise
> in some color channel.
> I do not see a lot of noise at all..
Noise isn't an issue. That has been processed away.
> >I'll get back to you on the false-color images in a bit.
> Nice, very curious!
Jarmo
Jarmo Korteniemi
I was trying to, and muuuuch more clearly than me. :)
Jarmo
In alt.sci.planetary <OLSdnSY0Z68...@giganews.com> stated that:
> http://home.comcast.net/~bobqatphotos/2004-12-27_Moon_Saturated.jpg
> http://home.comcast.net/~bobqatphotos/2004-12-27_Moon.jpg
> Bob ^,,^
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Jarmo Korteniemi * http://www.student.oulu.fi/~jkorteni *
Planetology group, Astronomy, University of Oulu, Finland
s-posti / email: jarmo DOT#1 korteniemi AT oulu DOT#2 fi
puhelin / phone: +358 (45) 6362264
huone / room: TÄ215 (klo 12-20, ajoittain aiemminkin)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Do you believe in astrology? Jupiter exerts less gravitational influence
over a human body than does an angry rhino less than two meters away...
--
Tuumasta toimeen on yhtä pitkä matka kuin täältä iäisyyteen.
- Oululehti 9.2.05
Jarmo Korteniemi
See these MOC NA (Mars Global Surveyor instrument Mars Orbiter
Camera narrow angle) images.. they show the amazingly ordinary
looking surface texture of the so-called lake in best available
detail:
1.39 meters / pixel:
http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/m07_m12/images/M07/M0700184.html
2.78 m/pixel:
http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/ab1_m04/images/M0200301.html
5.55 m/pixel:
http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/ab1_m04/images/M0403117.html
Okay, the surface is not ordinary. It is a mixture of glacier-like
viscous flows and dune deposits (no, those ripple-thingies are not
waves) and other eolian activity. No evidence of flat surfaces,
which at least I would expect if there were any lakes around.
Darkest regions have texture also.
There is, however, plenty of evidence for past, now-dried volatile-
rich flows in the region. Obviously. Surface texture speaks on
behalf of that. But no lakes. Point one to me if you see any?!
I'll get back to you on the HRSC raw images when I get back to
work - my home connection is quite crappy, sorry to say. :/
Jarmo Korteniemi
You are saying that the gradual change in color _has_to_be_ due to
the depth effect of water? No other possibilities, e.g. gradual change
in e.g. salinity of the rocks?
What I propose, is that this ancient river bed is showing what remains
of an ancient and now-dried lake, created into a local low (have to
check topography maps on this, though) when the river dried out. The
different dissolved salt contents were very high in that lake water. As
the lake dried further, the water retreated into the deepest regions.
At the same time, the salinity of the water (and also future deposits)
got higher and higher, just as in salt lakes on Earth. And, when
eventually all water was gone, all that was left was deposits of
increasingly salty deposits going into the deepest regions, and this
is now seen by the camera as blue-green, blue, and dark blue. What
makes this scenario not plausible?
You assume that the colors represent real-life colors. They do not.
Green and especially blue colors are exaggerated. Red is thus
'downplayed', to get the details (which we now discuss) into plain
view.
Jarmo
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Jarmo Korteniemi * http://www.student.oulu.fi/~jkorteni *
Planetology group, Astronomy, University of Oulu, Finland
s-posti / email: jarmo DOT#1 korteniemi AT oulu DOT#2 fi
puhelin / phone: +358 (45) 6362264
huone / room: TÄ215 (klo 12-20, ajoittain aiemminkin)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Mitchell Jones
wrote:
> "Bob Harrington" <rch.N...@blarg.net> wrote in message
> news:UJ6dnQwD2Pl...@giganews.com...
> > Mitchell Jones wrote:
> >
> >> Bottom line: Witches will ride brooms before that's anything other
> >> than a lake on Mars.
> >
> > If that ~is~ liquid water, or even a thin sheet of clear ice floating on
> > water, the simple test would be to look for specular surface reflections
> > from the sun. Shouldn't be hard for NASA or ESA to arrange a photo pass
> > or two looking for same.
>
> It has been done. There have no specular surface reflections detected in
> the area in question.
***{Nor are any possible. Even at the height of summer, Reull Vallis is
16 degrees from the plane of Mar's orbit--which means: it is physically
impossible for the sun to be almost directly overhead when a photo is
snapped, as it would have to be in order for Mars Express to capture its
reflection on the surface of the lake. (A reflected solar image on the
surface of the lake could be no more than about 10 km north of the
center of the photo without being out of the lake and on dry land. Thus
the angle from Mars Express to the spot, call it angle A, would be such
that tan A = 10/273 = .0366, and so A = 2.1 degrees. Thus the reflection
angle is insufficient, and any putative solar image would fall far from
the lake, on dry ground.) --MJ}***
> > Lack of such reflections would surely put a small dent in your theory,
>
> Essentially, it rules it out.
***{No, it is entirely to be expected.
Look, you naysayers are determined to have your way with this, so why
not stop spinning your wheels and focus on the weak points? Basically,
this discussion has been veering back and forth between two different
photos, and treating them as if they are one and the same. But they
aren't the same, and that fact is the source of whatever uncertainty may
remain in my analysis.
The probative value of the fog photo stems from (a) the fact that it can
be plausibly connected to a known source of vulcanism (the Tharsis
volcanos), (b) the fact that the depth below datum at that location is
known to be 5 km (see pg. 1 of Dr. Moehlmann's paper), (c) the thickness
of the fog and the indications of what may be blue pools of water within
it. However, the pattern of color variation indicating the absorption of
light in water, and the plainly visible hydrothermal vent, are absent
from the fog photo, or, at least, are not clearly and unarguably
present.
The probative value of the Reull Vallis photo stems from (a) the pattern
of color variation indicative of light absorption in water, (b) the
plainly visible hydrothermal vent running along the bottom of the lake,
(c) the brightly colored mineral deposits around the margins of the
lake, (d) the blurry spot that suggests the presence of a plume of warm,
rising water. Note, however, that while I have been assuming that the
depth below datum at that location is sufficient to support the
existence of liquid water, I don't know that for a fact. And note also
that I have been assuming a connection to some plausible underground
heat source, despite the fact that I don't really know that either, in
this case.
To sum up: the Reull Vallis lake photo is *not* in the same location as
the photo showing fog in Valles Marineris. Hence all of the arguments
that apply at one location do not necessarily apply at the other.
Nevertheless, witches will ride brooms before that's anything other than
a lake on Mars. :-)
--Mitchell Jones}***
Mitchell Jones
wrote:
***{And the burden of proof never shifts, regardless of what I say,
right? :-) --MJ}***
Mitchell Jones
"Bob Harrington" <rch.N...@blarg.net> wrote:
***{I don't really know that. I would have to see some experimental
data. In any case it doesn't matter, because the Reull Vallis Lake is
never positioned where a direct, overhead photo would show a reflection.
--MJ}***
> As to open minds, there is such a thing as ~too~ open... for example:
> making assumptions about something that one does not have all available
> information for
***{Such as assuming water at 10 mb has the same reflectivity as water
at 1013 mb? :-) --MJ}***
(i.e. how much manipulation has been done on the image
> in question
***{I'm partially guilty there, I guess. Dr. Moehlmann told me there
hadn't been any special manipulation done on the fog photo--i.e.,
nothing other than what is routinely done to all color photos from that
source--and I did generalize: I assumed that is also true of the Reull
Vallis photo. But nothing has been said here so far that contradicts
that assumption. --MJ}***
?), and then making concrete conclusions based on those
> assumptions (your definitive claim that this can ~only~ be open, clear
> water.)
***{Hey, I had to make an extreme claim. Nobody was responding to the
thread! Don't you know nothin'? :-) --MJ}***
> I took this photo of the moon that proves it has been attacked by clowns
> with paint cans:
***{I saw 'em do it. :-) --MJ}***
> http://home.comcast.net/~bobqatphotos/2004-12-27_Moon_Saturated.jpg
>
> Or not. It is actually just this natural color image of the moon -
>
> http://home.comcast.net/~bobqatphotos/2004-12-27_Moon.jpg
>
> - that I used Photoshop's saturation tool to absurdly stretch the very
> subtle color variations on the moon (and likely some camera sensor noise
> as well)
***{Seriously, are you suggesting that something similar has been done
to the photos we are discussing? If so, I hope you plan to cite some
sort of evidence. I am very much *not* willing to simply assume that on
your say so, because it doesn't make any sense that ESA would do such a
thing. (Hell, I don't even think NASA would deliberately doctor a photo
in that way, though in their case I would be a lot more receptive to the
idea. :-) --MJ}***
.
> Most images produced for public consumption by NASA and ESA have had
> some - or much - color and contrast manipulation applied, both for
> enhancement of details, and for just plain 'wow factor' intended to
> attract the very public interest you suggest they disdain below... The
> details of that manipulation are not always made clear, and sometimes
> omitted entirely - a pet peeve I've held for decades.
***{OK, so you *are* saying they doctor their pictures for spin control
purposes. Are you aware that would constitute scientific fraud? Are you
aware that a number of people in recent years have had their careers
wrecked when such allegations came to light? I'm not saying you are
wrong, mind you. I've seen some pretty funny looking stuff myself, over
the years. However, I have never seen indications that NASA, to be very
specific, tried to *create* excitement. Quite the opposite: they seem to
go out of their way to pour cold water on everything. --MJ}***
> From my own experience in image manipulation, the Mars image in question
> shows obvious signs of both contrast and saturation enhancement. Were
> you able to view the same Martian scene with your own unaided eyes, you
> would most likely see little more than variations in reddish rock and
> dust, with some slightly darker, coarser sands in the lowest parts of
> the valley just as occur in many other places on Mars.
***{Are you talking about the fog photo, or Reull Vallis? --MJ}***
***{Do you try to upstage someone who has proven that he can beat the
living crap out of you? I think not. Well, that's the situation NASA is
in. The reality is that, in a democracy, the winos, retards,
degenerates, "teachers," blue collar workers, homeowners, the elderly,
and most of the others who have their hands in the public trough, taken
singly or taken all together, have the rocket scientists outvoted. Major
discoveries in space exploration simply do not come quickly enough to
sustain the support that they elicit immediately after they occur.
Result: if you take advantage of such an opportunity to get your budget
raised, your support will not be there when the counterattack occurs,
and at that point you will give back all of your gains, and then give up
some more. Result: if it happens to you once, as it did to NASA, you
learn, and you don't repeat that mistake again. From their perspective,
such a modus operandi is necessary. It is not, however, in the best
interests of the human race. --MJ}***
> > For example, do you remember the early Mars mission which put out a
> > scoop into the Martian soil, pulled back a lump of dirt, perfused it
> > with sterile nutrients, and measured byproduct gases to see if the
> > emanations were of the sort that might indicate life? In particular,
> > do you recall that the results were precisely what had been publicly
> > announced, prior to the mission, was to be taken as indicative of
> > life? I certainly do. And I also remember that, rather than make such
> > an announcement, NASA bigwigs went into a huddle for several days,
> > and then announced that the results proved that there was, in fact,
> > no life on Mars!
>
> I recall that there were slightly ambiguous results from the test,
> subsequent study showing that there were non-biological processes that
> could also have produced the same outcome. It's been a while, I don't
> have links to those studies handy.
***{There is always ambiguity in science. The point, however, was this:
they agreed in advance what a positive result would be, and, based on
what they agreed, the result they got was a positive one--which means:
indicative of the presence of life on Mars. However, that came as a
shock to those in charge, because it was not what they wanted. Result:
they changed their standards after the fact, to kill the excitement.
--MJ}***
***{It's always possible to embrace something because it's what you want
to believe, even if the evidence doesn't support it. But the way to
avoid that is to do what we are doing here: argue out the pros and cons
in a public forum, and, if the stronger case is made by the other side,
you change your mind. --MJ}***
> Even if humanity spreads from Earth, we only postpone our final
> annihilation as the Universe approaches absolute entropy and our very
> protons decay... ;^)
***{I'm a steady state guy myself, so I don't have to worry about that
scenario. :-) --MJ}***
Mitchell Jones
Jarmo Korteniemi <aa....@see.dee.ee> wrote:
[snip]
>If you mean that the lowest topography is occupied
> by the seemingly black material, and going upwards it is followed by blue,
> green and the highest areas are yellowish. I see no reason why this could NOT
> or on the other hand SHOULD be the case...? Either way is quite possible. The
> colors may or may not be dependent of the topography.
***{OK, let's compare two hypotheses.
Hypothesis #1: It's not a lake, but a series of flaws in your camera
caused it (a) to falsely color the shallow portion of the bottom in a
dimmer version of its true color, which is yellow; (b) to falsely color
the slightly deeper levels in a still dimmer shade of yellow tinged with
bluegreen; (c) to falsely color even deeper levels in bluegreen without
yellow; (d) to falsely color the next lower levels in blue without
green; and (e) to falsely color the deepest levels in black.
Hypothesis #2: It's a lake.
Which hypothesis is the simplest explanation of the facts?
--Mitchell Jones}***
[snip]
Bob Harrington
Both Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Express are in polar orbits, and are
capable of pointing their cameras off nadir. The calculations would be
trivial compared to what got them there in the first place; similar
oblique viewing techniques are used by NASA's Terra and Aqua Earth
Observers to measure cloud heights, atmospheric aerosols, etc.
>> As to open minds, there is such a thing as ~too~ open... for
>> example: making assumptions about something that one does not have
>> all available information for
>
> ***{Such as assuming water at 10 mb has the same reflectivity as water
> at 1013 mb? :-) --MJ}***
Haven't done the experiment, the cat gets rather annoyed when I pump
more than half the air out of the apartment. But I have never seen any
evidence showing a marked change in the reflectance of liquid water tied
to atmospheric pressure. Others here have shown that just ~having~ free
standing liquid water at 10 mb is rather a challenge.
> (i.e. how much manipulation has been done on the image
>> in question
>
> ***{I'm partially guilty there, I guess. Dr. Moehlmann told me there
> hadn't been any special manipulation done on the fog photo--i.e.,
> nothing other than what is routinely done to all color photos from
> that source--and I did generalize: I assumed that is also true of the
> Reull Vallis photo. But nothing has been said here so far that
> contradicts that assumption. --MJ}***
I am referring to the ESA image of Reull Vallis that you have been
describing in great detail. It sure looks contrast and color stretched
to me, but I haven't gone and looked for non-manipulated "nekkid eye"
imagery of the same location.
> ?), and then making concrete conclusions based on those
>> assumptions (your definitive claim that this can ~only~ be open,
>> clear water.)
>
> ***{Hey, I had to make an extreme claim. Nobody was responding to the
> thread! Don't you know nothin'? :-) --MJ}***
I've forgotten more than I ever knew... Bobheimers, dontchaknow.
>> I took this photo of the moon that proves it has been attacked by
>> clowns with paint cans:
>
> ***{I saw 'em do it. :-) --MJ}***
>
>> http://home.comcast.net/~bobqatphotos/2004-12-27_Moon_Saturated.jpg
>>
>> Or not. It is actually just this natural color image of the moon -
>>
>> http://home.comcast.net/~bobqatphotos/2004-12-27_Moon.jpg
>>
>> - that I used Photoshop's saturation tool to absurdly stretch the
>> very subtle color variations on the moon (and likely some camera
>> sensor noise as well)
>
> ***{Seriously, are you suggesting that something similar has been done
> to the photos we are discussing? If so, I hope you plan to cite some
> sort of evidence. I am very much *not* willing to simply assume that
> on your say so, because it doesn't make any sense that ESA would do
> such a thing. (Hell, I don't even think NASA would deliberately
> doctor a photo in that way, though in their case I would be a lot
> more receptive to the idea. :-) --MJ}***
"Doctor" wouldn't be my first choice of words... as I said below, it is
done to enhance visibility of details, both for scientific value and
because such an image will impress the taxpayer a lot more than a bland
picture of sand. I can see that any time I want in the cat's litter
box... Our eyes would never see the "Towers of Creation" in Messier 16
as HST could, we can't integrate hours of light into a single glimpse;
nor can we see in the wavelengths that NICMOS or Chandra can.
>> Most images produced for public consumption by NASA and ESA have had
>> some - or much - color and contrast manipulation applied, both for
>> enhancement of details, and for just plain 'wow factor' intended to
>> attract the very public interest you suggest they disdain below...
>> The details of that manipulation are not always made clear, and
>> sometimes omitted entirely - a pet peeve I've held for decades.
>
> ***{OK, so you *are* saying they doctor their pictures for spin
> control purposes. Are you aware that would constitute scientific
> fraud? Are you aware that a number of people in recent years have had
> their careers wrecked when such allegations came to light? I'm not
> saying you are wrong, mind you. I've seen some pretty funny looking
> stuff myself, over the years. However, I have never seen indications
> that NASA, to be very specific, tried to *create* excitement. Quite
> the opposite: they seem to go out of their way to pour cold water on
> everything. --MJ}***
No. I'm saying that too often the method and amount of manipulation -
for whatever reason - are not included with the released image. But not
always, and more and more I ~do~ see satisfying explanations and "before
and after" comparisons. The trend is in the right direction.
>> From my own experience in image manipulation, the Mars image in
>> question shows obvious signs of both contrast and saturation
>> enhancement. Were you able to view the same Martian scene with your
>> own unaided eyes, you would most likely see little more than
>> variations in reddish rock and dust, with some slightly darker,
>> coarser sands in the lowest parts of the valley just as occur in
>> many other places on Mars.
>
> ***{Are you talking about the fog photo, or Reull Vallis? --MJ}***
The latter.
If I had done nothing to earn such a beating, I would do my best to
arrange an immediate audience for him with his maker.
> Well, that's the situation NASA
> is in. The reality is that, in a democracy, the winos, retards,
> degenerates, "teachers," blue collar workers, homeowners, the elderly,
> and most of the others who have their hands in the public trough,
> taken singly or taken all together, have the rocket scientists
> outvoted. Major discoveries in space exploration simply do not come
> quickly enough to sustain the support that they elicit immediately
> after they occur. Result: if you take advantage of such an
> opportunity to get your budget raised, your support will not be there
> when the counterattack occurs, and at that point you will give back
> all of your gains, and then give up some more. Result: if it happens
> to you once, as it did to NASA, you learn, and you don't repeat that
> mistake again. From their perspective, such a modus operandi is
> necessary. It is not, however, in the best interests of the human
> race. --MJ}***
Very few bureaucracies ever "give back" ~any~ of their gains, for any
reason. Rather, they will call a slightly smaller gain "a massive cut".
NASA's biggest black eyes have been the Shuttle disasters.
>>> For example, do you remember the early Mars mission which put out a
>>> scoop into the Martian soil, pulled back a lump of dirt, perfused it
>>> with sterile nutrients, and measured byproduct gases to see if the
>>> emanations were of the sort that might indicate life? In particular,
>>> do you recall that the results were precisely what had been publicly
>>> announced, prior to the mission, was to be taken as indicative of
>>> life? I certainly do. And I also remember that, rather than make
>>> such an announcement, NASA bigwigs went into a huddle for several
>>> days, and then announced that the results proved that there was, in
>>> fact, no life on Mars!
>>
>> I recall that there were slightly ambiguous results from the test,
>> subsequent study showing that there were non-biological processes
>> that could also have produced the same outcome. It's been a while,
>> I don't have links to those studies handy.
>
> ***{There is always ambiguity in science. The point, however, was
> this: they agreed in advance what a positive result would be, and,
> based on what they agreed, the result they got was a positive
> one--which means: indicative of the presence of life on Mars.
> However, that came as a shock to those in charge, because it was not
> what they wanted. Result: they changed their standards after the
> fact, to kill the excitement. --MJ}***
That sounds awfully cynical...
So, here's another chance to prove your hypothesis: Both current Mars
orbiters have infrared imaging capabilities allowing them to "see" the
night side of the planet. A post or two up you were giving us a -10 to
+12 degrees Celsius value for the lake water; on a typical cold Martian
night, that's gonna stand out like a sore, but very warm thumb in IR!
>
>> Even if humanity spreads from Earth, we only postpone our final
>> annihilation as the Universe approaches absolute entropy and our very
>> protons decay... ;^)
>
> ***{I'm a steady state guy myself, so I don't have to worry about that
> scenario. :-) --MJ}***
Then we will run out of DVDs and potato chips and resort to sending each
other to the cornfield out of sheer boredom... Note that Hollywood is
~already~ pretty much out of original ideas for films; in far less than
a few billion years, racial suicide will be infinitely preferable to
"Ishtar 271: A New Beginning"...
Bob Harrington
> Followups set to alt.sci.planetary.
>
> See these MOC NA (Mars Global Surveyor instrument Mars Orbiter
> Camera narrow angle) images.. they show the amazingly ordinary
> looking surface texture of the so-called lake in best available
> detail:
>
> 1.39 meters / pixel:
> http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/m07_m12/images/M07/M0700184.html
> 2.78 m/pixel:
> http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/ab1_m04/images/M0200301.html
> 5.55 m/pixel:
> http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/ab1_m04/images/M0403117.html
My Gawd! There are WAVES on the lake's surface!
And a crater or two... Martian phish phartes, no doubt... ;^)
Jarmo Korteniemi
> Both Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Express are in polar orbits, and are
> capable of pointing their cameras off nadir. The calculations would be
> trivial compared to what got them there in the first place; similar
> oblique viewing techniques are used by NASA's Terra and Aqua Earth
> Observers to measure cloud heights, atmospheric aerosols, etc.
FYI: Mars Express takes those off-nadir images by default, to get the
stereo effect. The stereo 1 channel images the terrain 18.9 degrees
"ahead" of nadir, and stereo 2 18.9 degrees "behind". So what you get
is a set of nine images, taken within this 37.8 window below the
spacecraft. In my opinion, the sun should be visible on the surface,
if there were any lakes around. No such things have been sighted yet.
Jarmo
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Jarmo Korteniemi * http://www.student.oulu.fi/~jkorteni *
Planetology group, Astronomy, University of Oulu, Finland
s-posti / email: jarmo DOT#1 korteniemi AT oulu DOT#2 fi
puhelin / phone: +358 (45) 6362264
huone / room: TÄ215 (klo 12-20, ajoittain aiemminkin)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Vendicar Decarian
> Nevertheless, witches will ride brooms before that's anything other than
> a lake on Mars. :-)
Mitchell Jones has a powerful NEED to believe there is a lake on mars, even
though here in the reality based community we know that this is quite
impossible.
Mitchell Jones suffers from a host of other faith based delusions which a
quick web search will readily illustrate.
Jan Panteltje
<rch.N...@blarg.net> wrote in <HpWdnQecr-z...@giganews.com>:
>> on your say so, because it doesn't make any sense that ESA would do
>> such a thing. (Hell, I don't even think NASA would deliberately
>> doctor a photo in that way, though in their case I would be a lot
>> more receptive to the idea. :-) --MJ}***
>
>"Doctor" wouldn't be my first choice of words... as I said below, it is
>done to enhance visibility of details, both for scientific value and
>because such an image will impress the taxpayer a lot more than a bland
>picture of sand. I can see that any time I want in the cat's litter
>box... Our eyes would never see the "Towers of Creation" in Messier 16
>as HST could, we can't integrate hours of light into a single glimpse;
>nor can we see in the wavelengths that NICMOS or Chandra can.
>
>>> From my own experience in image manipulation, the Mars image in
>>> question shows obvious signs of both contrast and saturation
>>> enhancement. Were you able to view the same Martian scene with your
>>> own unaided eyes, you would most likely see little more than
>>> variations in reddish rock and dust, with some slightly darker,
>>> coarser sands in the lowest parts of the valley just as occur in
>>> many other places on Mars.
Well, that is a lot of wild assumptions.
It seems to me the guys do not even know how to apply gama correctly.
It is a high quality camera system, stereo too, and now all of the suffen
same artefacts appear at the same place in both stereo cameras, and more
strange things.
Has NOBODY ever asked what the black is? Of cause it was asked here!
Then nicely made a black level, and that is zero, no reflection
(omitting dark current sensors).
Now a pool of oil (Bush wants to mars all of the sudden), black rock (granite?)
with NO DUST ANYWHERE, or water, heated by geothermal processes.
One has to be in total opposition with observation and reality to assign
it all to a camera 'artefact'.
Only thing that could do it is a paint job.
And they really are not that good at that.
>So, here's another chance to prove your hypothesis: Both current Mars
>orbiters have infrared imaging capabilities allowing them to "see" the
>night side of the planet. A post or two up you were giving us a -10 to
>+12 degrees Celsius value for the lake water; on a typical cold Martian
>night, that's gonna stand out like a sore, but very warm thumb in IR!
What is this instrument called? 'Neutron spectrometer?' is there water
in that area?
Jan Panteltje
Korteniemi <aa....@see.dee.ee> wrote in <d2hvg8$192$1...@news.oulu.fi>:
>To make a long story (see my other mails) short, I'll just ask you this:
>
>You are saying that the gradual change in color _has_to_be_ due to
>the depth effect of water? No other possibilities, e.g. gradual change
>in e.g. salinity of the rocks?
>
>What I propose, is that this ancient river bed is showing what remains
>of an ancient and now-dried lake, created into a local low (have to
>check topography maps on this, though) when the river dried out. The
>different dissolved salt contents were very high in that lake water. As
>the lake dried further, the water retreated into the deepest regions.
>At the same time, the salinity of the water (and also future deposits)
>got higher and higher, just as in salt lakes on Earth. And, when
>eventually all water was gone, all that was left was deposits of
>increasingly salty deposits going into the deepest regions, and this
>is now seen by the camera as blue-green, blue, and dark blue. What
>makes this scenario not plausible?
>
>You assume that the colors represent real-life colors. They do not.
>Green and especially blue colors are exaggerated. Red is thus
>'downplayed', to get the details (which we now discuss) into plain
>view.
>
>Jarmo
OK, you are very convincing, but it is not clear to me why 'salts' should
be dark (towards black), there is a big salt lake in the US and it is WHITE.
The differences (even if colors are heavily manipulated) over a small area
(say 50 meters) from dark (your salts) towards pure green (your artefact)
are rather big.
It is a stereo camera (I have no details on that design, but think it are 2
cameras?) would have to have the SAME 'artefact' in the SAME way at the SAME
place, because in the combined image there is green contributed from both
angles it seems.
I did some googling for the camera design:
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=34826&fbodylongid=1597
indeed we have 2 sets of sensors, looking 18.9 degrees front and back, so
probability that both have the same 'artefact' is likely zero.
And then it should be in other images too.
If the image is somehow combined on the table in ESA, then anything is
possible,
I have even seen (and published in sci.astro some years ago) a picture of
what clearly looked like a geyser on mars from NASA, and it had a red dot were
the steam escaped... One would think volcanism! No no, and was it a MONOCHROME
shot? What a web we weave!
Anyhow, it is an interesting camera design, and it works right too.
I love this sort of stuff, designed my first (vidicon at that time) camera
in 1968.... got me a good job in broadcasting then.
To make a long story short, I am not convinced at all that what I see here
is due to image processing or 'artefacts'.
Colors may not be really 100% (obviously), but colors do not lie.
Corrections are applied to the whole picture area, unless 'artist impression'.
There are some other factors, people here show detailed pics 'cross section'
of the area, I have always suspected water levels were going up and down.
Maybe with seasons, maybe with cyclic geothermal events.
Reason I think that, goes way back, to Lovel, he did see 'channels' on mars
in the telescope, that he claimed he could not understand why he had not seen
these before.
He was a trained observer.
Water has been detected by spectrometer, and the Russians have detected
chlorophyll like spectra as in plant life.
Your picture goes from blue to black to green, not only in one place, but in
several, and in a ways that makes perfect sense for plants along a coastline.
Occam's razor, the simplest explanation.
Jarmo Korteniemi
maybe there ain't a lake there, if you are man enough.
http://www.student.oulu.fi/~jkorteni/tmp/reullvallis
A walk-through of the various images:
h0022_0000_nadir_original.jpg [*]
The original nadir (straight down-pointing) image of the area.
THIS image has 12.5 meter/pixel resolution. Not the PR image.
You'll find it out if you read the PR image caption a bit better.
h0022_0000_nadir_dark_enhanced.jpg
The same image with enhancements done to show the dark region better.
h0022_0000_rgb_original.jpg [*]
The unprocessed (but combined) color composite of the R, G and B
channels. Resolution 50 m/pixel. Is this what you would expect Mars
to look like? I didn't think so...
h0022_0000_rgb_autolevels.jpg
...which is why I let Photoshop do some automatic level adjustments,
seen in this image. Still a bit off...
h0022_0000_rgb_enhanced2.jpg
...so I modified the image by hand. This pleases the eye most. And
I do know for a fact, that the PR images are done in a similar
fashion - one's eye is the color calibrator. You know why? Because
there is no good color calibration available yet. That's what I've
been telling you all along, but you just can't except that, can ya?
h0022_0000_cut_red.tif [*]
h0022_0000_cut_green.tif [*]
h0022_0000_cut_blue.tif [*]
Cut-outs from the three (R, G and B) color images from the same area.
Saved in tiff format to emphasize the fact that there are artefacts
in these images, whether you like it or not. Ever heard of image
packing, Jan, in your 37 years of working with cameras? And if you
now decide to start critisizing about the decision to pack the images,
well go ahead. It's stupid. But, at the same time, the packing only
effects areas where no surface details are seen with the particular
image resolution. And most importantly, it leads to increased amount
of data which can be obtained. So far several hundred gigabytes have
been obtained - and the land area which has been imaged with better
resolution (even with the packing) than ever before, is somewhere
in the order of 1.5 times the land area of Russia.
[*] All the processing that has been done is changing the image to
map-projection and some noise reduction. The packing effects (which
I earlier referred to as artifacts) are due to image packing onboard
the spacecraft before downlinking the images to Earth.
mola_topography.jpg
Lastly, a MOLA topography of the area. It shows that the areas of the
darkest deposits is NOT the lowest region.
Now, PLEASE, discuss the possibility of a lake on the ground with me.
Jarmo Korteniemi
> Well, that is a lot of wild assumptions.
> It seems to me the guys do not even know how to apply gama correctly.
> It is a high quality camera system, stereo too, and now all of the suffen
> same artefacts appear at the same place in both stereo cameras, and more
> strange things.
> Has NOBODY ever asked what the black is? Of cause it was asked here!
> Then nicely made a black level, and that is zero, no reflection
> (omitting dark current sensors).
> Now a pool of oil (Bush wants to mars all of the sudden), black rock (granite?)
> with NO DUST ANYWHERE, or water, heated by geothermal processes.
> One has to be in total opposition with observation and reality to assign
> it all to a camera 'artefact'.
> Only thing that could do it is a paint job.
> And they really are not that good at that.
If you would kindly enough look at the raw HRSC images I wrote a post about
just five minutes ago. Link below. Then continue talking about black regions
etc. I said that it was an artefact in the image, not in the camera. Get yer
facts straight.
> >So, here's another chance to prove your hypothesis: Both current Mars
> >orbiters have infrared imaging capabilities allowing them to "see" the
> >night side of the planet. A post or two up you were giving us a -10 to
> >+12 degrees Celsius value for the lake water; on a typical cold Martian
> >night, that's gonna stand out like a sore, but very warm thumb in IR!
>
> What is this instrument called? 'Neutron spectrometer?' is there water
> in that area?
THEMIS onboard the Odyssey spacecraft and HRSC on Mars Express.
Looking forward to your followup on this issue.
Jarmo Korteniemi
Come on, behave nice. Mitchell does have many good points on the
possibility of water existing there. I bought that, I know it is a
possibility, even though a remote one.. If somebody doesn't think it's a
possibility, then he doesn't look at all the evidence. You shouldn't
act like a know-it-all, but look at everything. In the process, you can,
will, and should make assumptions. But also, you should be able to admit
that the assumptions you've made were wrong when you know better. I know
I've done that.
There are indications that small amounts of water have recently been
flooded onto the surface, and the planet experiences some very odd
conditions once in a while - now we _are_ in a cold period. I wouldn't
be so surprised if there was some liquid water on the surface at some
point somewhere, even now (though covered by ice or dust or whatever).
Here, at Reull Vallis, however, it does not seem to be the case.
If you want to have a decent discussion about this stuff, don't
start picking on somebody. That's idiotic to say the least. And since
you didn't have anything else to say.. well think about it.
Jarmo Korteniemi
> On a sunny day (Thu, 31 Mar 2005 23:01:28 +0000 (UTC)) it happened Jarmo
> Korteniemi <aa....@see.dee.ee> wrote in <d2hvg8$192$1...@news.oulu.fi>:
> >of an ancient and now-dried lake, created into a local low (have to
> >check topography maps on this, though) when the river dried out. The
> >different dissolved salt contents were very high in that lake water. As
> >the lake dried further, the water retreated into the deepest regions.
> >At the same time, the salinity of the water (and also future deposits)
> >got higher and higher, just as in salt lakes on Earth. And, when
> >eventually all water was gone, all that was left was deposits of
> >increasingly salty deposits going into the deepest regions, and this
> >is now seen by the camera as blue-green, blue, and dark blue. What
> >makes this scenario not plausible?
> >
> >You assume that the colors represent real-life colors. They do not.
> >Green and especially blue colors are exaggerated. Red is thus
> >'downplayed', to get the details (which we now discuss) into plain
> >view.
> >
> >Jarmo
> OK, you are very convincing, but it is not clear to me why 'salts' should
> be dark (towards black), there is a big salt lake in the US and it is WHITE.
I don't know. But remember that I am not talking about the _salt_ you put
in your food, but the various different salts which appear in nature and
dissolve into water. Maybe it's not salts at all. From the topography I
noticed that there is a central ridge in the canyon, and that appears to be
the location where the darkest colors occur. That may be a place of silts,
fine grained materials, mud even, left over by the material flow in the
canyon. Or, it may be a backwash (dunno if that's the right word in English)
if there was a large release of water from upstream. I'd expect that this
kind of event would cause a recoil which would pile stuff up at the center of
the channel. Those are guesses. But the evidence looks like there is no lake,
and the answer must be somewhere else.
> The differences (even if colors are heavily manipulated) over a small area
> (say 50 meters) from dark (your salts) towards pure green (your artefact)
> are rather big.
> It is a stereo camera (I have no details on that design, but think it are 2
> cameras?) would have to have the SAME 'artefact' in the SAME way at the SAME
> place, because in the combined image there is green contributed from both
> angles it seems.
Nope. The camera takes images with no artefacts. It's the transferring back to
Earth that is the problem. In order to get substantial amount of data back, it
has to be compressed. Lossless packing could be used, but they haven't. Instead
of just packing everything with the same algorythm, the areas which have no surface
texture to speak of is packed most, and the area with fine surface texture is
compressed least. This results in jpeg-like blocks in the areas with no texture.
Every image is compressed separately, automatically, in the spacecraft.
> I did some googling for the camera design:
> http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=34826&fbodylongid=1597
> indeed we have 2 sets of sensors, looking 18.9 degrees front and back, so
> probability that both have the same 'artefact' is likely zero.
> And then it should be in other images too.
> If the image is somehow combined on the table in ESA, then anything is
> possible,
> I have even seen (and published in sci.astro some years ago) a picture of
> what clearly looked like a geyser on mars from NASA, and it had a red dot were
> the steam escaped... One would think volcanism! No no, and was it a MONOCHROME
> shot? What a web we weave!
Err.. ? Tell me more?
> Anyhow, it is an interesting camera design, and it works right too.
> I love this sort of stuff, designed my first (vidicon at that time) camera
> in 1968.... got me a good job in broadcasting then.
> To make a long story short, I am not convinced at all that what I see here
> is due to image processing or 'artefacts'.
> Colors may not be really 100% (obviously), but colors do not lie.
Yes, the dark-appearing bluish areas are DARKER and BLUER than the surroundings.
But no, they are not water-blue and do not show water. Just look at the images
I provided on my web page.
> Corrections are applied to the whole picture area, unless 'artist impression'.
> There are some other factors, people here show detailed pics 'cross section'
> of the area, I have always suspected water levels were going up and down.
> Maybe with seasons, maybe with cyclic geothermal events.
> Reason I think that, goes way back, to Lovel, he did see 'channels' on mars
> in the telescope, that he claimed he could not understand why he had not seen
> these before.
> He was a trained observer.
So you think that Lowell saw channels? Man, he was a trained observer, yes,
but his equipment was flawed, and the formations he saw were on the edge of his
perception. So his eyes made a correction, connecting the dots into lines, and
voilá, he saw channels. And where the heck are those channels now? He didn't
even see all the major albedo differences on the surface. It's like looking
at the moon with plain eyes and saying that you see the Apollo landing sites.
> Water has been detected by spectrometer, and the Russians have detected
> chlorophyll like spectra as in plant life.
Chlorophyll? Where? When?
> Your picture goes from blue to black to green, not only in one place, but in
> several, and in a ways that makes perfect sense for plants along a coastline.
> Occam's razor, the simplest explanation.
Simple as hell, yes. Explain why we don't observe any other signs of
life there? And how do you propose this life DOES exist in that
environment? Shouldn't there be major outgassing oxygen - where is it?
Mitchell Jones
"Bob Harrington" <rch.N...@blarg.net> wrote:
***{Undoubtedly so, but they need to do it. And I don't know if they
would be able to see the thing if they were at the correct location and
angle when they took their picture, given the low elevation. Remember:
it is only in the middle of the summer that the sun comes within 16
degrees of that location. The angle is larger at other times, varying
from 16 degrees in the middle of the summer to 66 degrees in the middle
of the winter. --MJ}***
The calculations would be
> trivial compared to what got them there in the first place; similar
> oblique viewing techniques are used by NASA's Terra and Aqua Earth
> Observers to measure cloud heights, atmospheric aerosols, etc.
>
> >> As to open minds, there is such a thing as ~too~ open... for
> >> example: making assumptions about something that one does not have
> >> all available information for
> >
> > ***{Such as assuming water at 10 mb has the same reflectivity as water
> > at 1013 mb? :-) --MJ}***
>
> Haven't done the experiment, the cat gets rather annoyed when I pump
> more than half the air out of the apartment. But I have never seen any
> evidence showing a marked change in the reflectance of liquid water tied
> to atmospheric pressure.
***{Nor have I, but I haven't seen any pointing the other way, either.
Anyway, as I have already said, it doesn't matter: a straight down photo
can't show a reflected image on that lake. While they could attempt an
angle shot, timed to the precise moment when the spot would be on the
lake, it would take a lot of time and trouble, and would piss off a lot
of people who have projects of their own that require the use of that
camera. Bottom line: even if such a mode of verification is
feasible--which is not clear--it isn't likely to happen. I contend,
however, that the case is clear on other grounds. --MJ}***
Others here have shown that just ~having~ free
> standing liquid water at 10 mb is rather a challenge.
***{No one has shown any such thing in this thread, or even attempted to
do so. I went into that issue in great depth, and demonstrated that it
is *not* a challenge--that at 5 km below datum liquid water could exist
up to roughly 12 degrees C. Moreover, though I didn't go into that
specifically, hydrothermal vent water is typically very heavy with
dissolved minerals, which act like antifreeze, and depress the freezing
point. Thus the range at which water could be liquid under these
conditions is likely 20 degrees C or more. (It could be a *lot* more, if
the right stuff is dissolved in the water.) If you disagree with any of
this, feel free to give your reasons. --MJ}***
> > (i.e. how much manipulation has been done on the image
> >> in question
> >
> > ***{I'm partially guilty there, I guess. Dr. Moehlmann told me there
> > hadn't been any special manipulation done on the fog photo--i.e.,
> > nothing other than what is routinely done to all color photos from
> > that source--and I did generalize: I assumed that is also true of the
> > Reull Vallis photo. But nothing has been said here so far that
> > contradicts that assumption. --MJ}***
>
> I am referring to the ESA image of Reull Vallis that you have been
> describing in great detail. It sure looks contrast and color stretched
> to me, but I haven't gone and looked for non-manipulated "nekkid eye"
> imagery of the same location.
***{It's a long trip, but if you have the resources, I say go for it.
:-) --MJ}***
***{That reminds me of one of the points I keep wanting to make, but
somehow never think of when actually working on a post. :-( I keep
labeling the crack in the bottom of the alleged lake as "an enormous
hydrothermal vent." Well, in addition to the color pattern indicating
water, and the need for geothermal heat to keep the water from freezing,
there is another reason for concluding that that's a hydrothermal vent:
if it were not, it would be full of sand! Where are the dune fields, if
that's not a lake? Sand would have been continually settling into that
crack for a billion years. Why hasn't it filled the thing up by now?
Hell, even if it was a lake, that crack would have long since filled
with debris--unless it it is hydrothermal vent! You can't say wind
would clean the sand out: it's down in a hole. Sand would fall in, but
it wouldn't fall out! But a plug in a hydrothermal vent causes a heat
buildup. Eventually the water flashes to steam, and blows the plug out
of the pipe. --MJ}***
***{I guess it does, but I was paying attention to those events when
they were taking place, and that's an accurate description of what
happened. Believe me, I saw it as a riddle at the time, because I would
have thought they would have *wanted* excitement. It was only years
later that I came to understand the political realities which they face.
That reality, to repeat, is this: space exploration may objectively be
one of the most important things for the human race to do, to ensure its
long term survival, but a majority of the voters in a democracy do not,
and will not, comprehend that. That state of affairs limits NASA's
budget to a certain size relative to everything else, and if they
opportunistically go for more when there is momentary excitement in the
press, they may get it, but they will pay a heavy price later, when the
excitement dies down and the groups from whom they extracted the money
go after them. NASA's culture has been shaped by that. It has made them
into the group of unimaginative, ultracautious, hidebound, thoroughgoing
wet blankets that they unarguably are. But don't get me wrong: I am not
arguing for abolishing NASA, because in the current environment, that
would just mean the money would go to winos, retards, drug addicts,
"teachers," geezers, and other parasites. As long as taxpayer money is
going to be doled out in the thoroughly immoral way that is accepted
current practice, I would rather it go to agencies like NASA. But their
internal culture is thoroughly corrupt, and something needs to be done
about it. --MJ}***
***{If it were close up IR, it would indeed. But do they do IR on close
passes? If they do, I haven't seen any. Remember: Mars Express was a
mere 273 km above Reull Vallis when that picture was taken. Did they do
an IR image at that time? If so, please tell me where to find it.
--MJ}***
> >> Even if humanity spreads from Earth, we only postpone our final
> >> annihilation as the Universe approaches absolute entropy and our very
> >> protons decay... ;^)
> >
> > ***{I'm a steady state guy myself, so I don't have to worry about that
> > scenario. :-) --MJ}***
>
> Then we will run out of DVDs and potato chips and resort to sending each
> other to the cornfield out of sheer boredom... Note that Hollywood is
> ~already~ pretty much out of original ideas for films; in far less than
> a few billion years, racial suicide will be infinitely preferable to
> "Ishtar 271: A New Beginning"...
***{I'll admit to being completely baffled by the above. There are over
200 billion galaxies in the portion of the universe presently accessible
to our telescopes, and likely many times that number that are still out
of range. And there are 200 billion sunlike stars in the Milky Way
galaxy alone, with the vast majority of them likely to have planets.
What could ever become boring about exploring that universe? I literally
cannot imagine a life more wonderful than the life the future holds for
us, if we can free ourselves from the parasites who want to enslave us,
and begin to move out into infinite space. --MJ}***
> >> In the meanwhile, I support enthusiastic but logical expansion of our
> >> exploration of the solar system and beyond. NASA and ESA are
> >> already providing some spectacular results from Mars and Saturn, and
> >> via the Great Observatories, glimpses of the wonders beyond.
***{That's right. Forget the DVD's, potato chips, and cornfields. Let's
go out there and begin to experience the wonders for ourselves. To do
that, of course, we will somehow have to scrape the leeches off of our
backs, but hey, where there's a will, there's a way! :-) --MJ}***
> >> Bob ^,,^
Mitchell Jones
Jarmo Korteniemi <aa....@see.dee.ee> wrote:
> In alt.sci.planetary <HpWdnQecr-z...@giganews.com> stated that:
> > Both Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Express are in polar orbits, and are
> > capable of pointing their cameras off nadir. The calculations would be
> > trivial compared to what got them there in the first place; similar
> > oblique viewing techniques are used by NASA's Terra and Aqua Earth
> > Observers to measure cloud heights, atmospheric aerosols, etc.
>
> FYI: Mars Express takes those off-nadir images by default, to get the
> stereo effect. The stereo 1 channel images the terrain 18.9 degrees
> "ahead" of nadir, and stereo 2 18.9 degrees "behind". So what you get
> is a set of nine images, taken within this 37.8 window below the
> spacecraft. In my opinion, the sun should be visible on the surface,
> if there were any lakes around. No such things have been sighted yet.
***{As I pointed out in an earlier post, you would have to be at a very
precise position and angle, to ensure that the sun's reflection would be
positioned on the lake. With Mar's express moving at many thousands of
miles per hour, the window of opportunity would likely be a fraction of
a second. Taking such a photo would take a lot of planning and effort,
and would piss a lot of people off who would prefer to use the camera
for other purposes. But if you think you can persuade ESA to do it, I
say go for it. --MJ}***
Jan Panteltje
Korteniemi <aa....@see.dee.ee> wrote in <d2jr23$f2e$1...@news.oulu.fi>:
>If you would kindly enough look at the raw HRSC images I wrote a post about
>just five minutes ago. Link below.
Where?
Then continue talking about black regions
>etc. I said that it was an artefact in the image, not in the camera. Get yer
>facts straight.
>
>
>> >So, here's another chance to prove your hypothesis: Both current Mars
>> >orbiters have infrared imaging capabilities allowing them to "see" the
>> >night side of the planet. A post or two up you were giving us a -10 to
>> >+12 degrees Celsius value for the lake water; on a typical cold Martian
>> >night, that's gonna stand out like a sore, but very warm thumb in IR!
>>
>> What is this instrument called? 'Neutron spectrometer?' is there water
>> in that area?
>
>THEMIS onboard the Odyssey spacecraft and HRSC on Mars Express.
Hey, HRSC is the camera! I would like to see data from the neutron
spectrometer for that area (to see if thsre is water there).
>Looking forward to your followup on this issue.
Look here, and be amazed!
http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/pa/News/MarsOdyssey.html
So, many places water (ice) is less then 1 meter below surface.
Any geothermal heat would metl the ice.
That vally is quite deep, and no reason i see why then water should not flow
in.
We need to position in a bigger map, dunno yet where to find this data for
this valley.
Jan Panteltje
Korteniemi <aa....@see.dee.ee> wrote in <d2jp0f$ejc$1...@news.oulu.fi>:
>Okay. Here are the original HRSC images, maybe you can now admit that
>maybe there ain't a lake there, if you are man enough.
>
>http://www.student.oulu.fi/~jkorteni/tmp/reullvallis
>
>A walk-through of the various images:
>
> h0022_0000_nadir_original.jpg [*]
>The original nadir (straight down-pointing) image of the area.
>THIS image has 12.5 meter/pixel resolution. Not the PR image.
This is what I hoped it would be, I am viewing it in Linux with XV,
it was to big for the ee viewer (I used the gamma curves of that),
but this is clearly like the original, only BW.
The dark areas are there as expected.
>You'll find it out if you read the PR image caption a bit better.
?
>h0022_0000_nadir_dark_enhanced.jpg
OK, now we see what looks like some depth sort of channels / areas in the dark,
still what I would expect.
>h0022_0000_rgb_original.jpg [*]
WOW, nice and blue streaming clear water ;-)
More then I expected.
>The unprocessed (but combined) color composite of the R, G and B
>channels. Resolution 50 m/pixel. Is this what you would expect Mars
>to look like? I didn't think so...
Why not, you mean more red? more red is not less blue, I'd say less green...
would do that here.
>h0022_0000_rgb_autolevels.jpg
Right, but 'auto white' is a bit a gamble, we do not know what areas are
really white, so this is dubious to say the least.
>...which is why I let Photoshop do some automatic level adjustments,
>seen in this image. Still a bit off...
>h0022_0000_rgb_enhanced2.jpg
OK, it remains subjective of cause.
As you (or photoshop) adjust gain for each color, the low level blue is
little affected.
>...so I modified the image by hand. This pleases the eye most. And
>I do know for a fact, that the PR images are done in a similar
>fashion - one's eye is the color calibrator. You know why? Because
>there is no good color calibration available yet. That's what I've
>been telling you all along, but you just can't except that, can ya?
Accept no WHAT? So far it is exactly as expected!
> h0022_0000_cut_red.tif [*]
A bit of more red in the depth ...
> h0022_0000_cut_green.tif [*]
First I thought 'noise' but no, PLANTS!!! there are lots of 'areas'
lighting up in green, and normal ground is NOT green.
This also sort of nihilates the green 'artefacts' as these areas are
everywhere.
Of cause in normal light, we can say: 0.11 B + 0.59 G + 0.3 R = Y
So expect a stronger green signal anyways.
> h0022_0000_cut_blue.tif [*]
OK,
well artefacts, the thing (camera) sensor array slides over the area.
It picks up (in this case) blue light and the variations of that.
We wil have to accept that it actually represents what it sees.
You technical explanation for what you call artefacts please.
>Cut-outs from the three (R, G and B) color images from the same area.
>Saved in tiff format to emphasize the fact that there are artefacts
>in these images, whether you like it or not. Ever heard of image
>packing, Jan, in your 37 years of working with cameras? And if you
>now decide to start critisizing about the decision to pack the images,
>well go ahead. It's stupid.
Oops I did not know you did something evil like that ;-)
>But, at the same time, the packing only
>effects areas where no surface details are seen with the particular
>image resolution.
I cannot judge that at all without knowing the exact algo, like to share?
The we can run a test one some prepared material (like a picture of a lake
with bushes around it for example).
Now that is fair and realistic do you not think so?
>And most importantly, it leads to increased amount
>of data which can be obtained. So far several hundred gigabytes have
>been obtained - and the land area which has been imaged with better
>resolution (even with the packing) than ever before, is somewhere
>in the order of 1.5 times the land area of Russia.
OK, bandwidth is always a problem.
I'd personally go for true uncompressed....
>[*] All the processing that has been done is changing the image to
>map-projection and some noise reduction. The packing effects (which
>I earlier referred to as artifacts) are due to image packing onboard
>the spacecraft before downlinking the images to Earth.
I really like to see your packing algo.
>mola_topography.jpg
>Lastly, a MOLA topography of the area. It shows that the areas of the
>darkest deposits is NOT the lowest region.
Yes, good one, well, does that thing measure to bottom of a fluid?
It is also possible to have different height lakes close to each other
(for example where I live).
Dunno in this case, no contest.
>Now, PLEASE, discuss the possibility of a lake on the ground with me.
>
>Jarmo
I think I just did (see also my referal to
http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/pa/News/MarsOdyssey.html
in the other posting before this).
I do want to thank you for all these cool pictures, and I will look at them
again some more times, to see what I can come up with.
I think you guy(s) are doing a fine job, but you have not convinced me at all
there is no lake there, on the contrary.
BTW, you are aware if the camera voltage versus light output is linear, that
for a normal display on a TV / CRT you have to use ALWAYS gamma 1/2.2?
This is to compensate for the CRT brightnes versus voltage curve of x to the
power 2.2 (and actually the way TV is transmitted too).
If you do not do that, all you black will have no detail.
So what gamma did you use?
Jan Panteltje
Korteniemi <aa....@see.dee.ee> wrote in <d2jtj8$fjr$1...@news.oulu.fi>:
>> I have even seen (and published in sci.astro some years ago) a picture of
>> what clearly looked like a geyser on mars from NASA, and it had a red dot were
>> the steam escaped... One would think volcanism! No no, and was it a MONOCHROME
>> shot? What a web we weave!
>
>Err.. ? Tell me more?
I did some googling, this I will now have to set my evening apart for,
and could not find it back, I will try again now.
No joy, must have been before 2000, maybe as far back as 1996?
Have been a long time on usenet.
It wenty like this:
Somebody posted an image from a white cloud, suggesting a geyser.
Somebody else suggested dustdevil.
Idownloaded the picture, and enlarged it to see if i could find where
the cloud originated.The whole thin gwas BW of cause.
Excpet there was one orange red pixel, almost like marked with a pencil,
where the geyser (I am sure of that still) originated.
I reposted the link, with a ASCII drawing of the projected shadow of the
cloud, and why it could noty be a dust devil (do not remmber that detail).
Why should there be no geysers on mars? Are we not allowed to see these?
>Chlorophyll? Where? When?
OK, now I will have to google again....
Opps, now I am tired, no foind, but HURA!
Google 'mars chlorophyll spectra' several papers online.
>
>Simple as hell, yes. Explain why we don't observe any other signs of
>life there? And how do you propose this life DOES exist in that
>environment? Shouldn't there be major outgassing oxygen - where is it?
Well, plants on earth, some mosses even grow in Siberia.
Later.... :-)
Need some coffee :-)
bz
C5D966.114...@spectator.sj.sys.us.xo.net:
> ***{As I pointed out in an earlier post, you would have to be at a very
> precise position and angle, to ensure that the sun's reflection would be
> positioned on the lake. With Mar's express moving at many thousands of
> miles per hour, the window of opportunity would likely be a fraction of
> a second. Taking such a photo would take a lot of planning and effort,
> and would piss a lot of people off who would prefer to use the camera
> for other purposes. But if you think you can persuade ESA to do it, I
> say go for it. --MJ}***
>
If there are waves, you will see reflections at a much wider set of angles.
--
bz
please pardon my infinite ignorance, the set-of-things-I-do-not-know is an
infinite set.
bz...@ch100-5.chem.lsu.edu remove ch100-5 to avoid spam trap
Mitchell Jones
bz <bz...@ch100-5.chem.lsu.edu> wrote:
> Mitchell Jones <mjo...@21cenlogic.com> wrote in news:mjones-
> C5D966.114...@spectator.sj.sys.us.xo.net:
>
> > ***{As I pointed out in an earlier post, you would have to be at a very
> > precise position and angle, to ensure that the sun's reflection would be
> > positioned on the lake. With Mar's express moving at many thousands of
> > miles per hour, the window of opportunity would likely be a fraction of
> > a second. Taking such a photo would take a lot of planning and effort,
> > and would piss a lot of people off who would prefer to use the camera
> > for other purposes. But if you think you can persuade ESA to do it, I
> > say go for it. --MJ}***
> >
>
> If there are waves, you will see reflections at a much wider set of angles.
***{Atmospheric pressure on Mars is about 1/100th that of Earth, meaning
it's close to vacuum. Winds can produce dust storms, especially by
building up electrostatic repulsion between dust particles, but would be
very ineffective at moving anything heavier. That means turning a
windmill or making waves on a lake would seldom be possible. Water on
Mars, for the most part, would have a surface as flat as a pane of
glass. --MJ}***
Jarmo Korteniemi
> I did some googling, this I will now have to set my evening apart for,
> and could not find it back, I will try again now.
> No joy, must have been before 2000, maybe as far back as 1996?
> Have been a long time on usenet.
> It wenty like this:
> Somebody posted an image from a white cloud, suggesting a geyser.
> Somebody else suggested dustdevil.
> Idownloaded the picture, and enlarged it to see if i could find where
> the cloud originated.The whole thin gwas BW of cause.
> Excpet there was one orange red pixel, almost like marked with a pencil,
> where the geyser (I am sure of that still) originated.
> I reposted the link, with a ASCII drawing of the projected shadow of the
> cloud, and why it could noty be a dust devil (do not remmber that detail).
> Why should there be no geysers on mars? Are we not allowed to see these?
Yes, geysers could exist on Mars. My bet is that there have been geysers.
But no current, active geysers have been oserved, at least to my limited
knowledge. It would be a sensation, if one would be found.
First of all - no current orbiter camera has taken anything but grayscale
images of Mars. The color images you see are composites of grayscale
images taken in different wavelengths, and coded into rgb channels. Thus,
if you saw a grayscale image with a red dot, you were looking at either
a composite image, which I doubt since it would be hard to imagine
why they left the rest of the image uncoloured, or you it was a gray-
scale image with somebody's drawing on top. I suspect the latter.
I remember several images of dust devils. They are distinguished
from geysers by the fact that they move and leave tracks. Since
geysers do not move, they should have an apron of somekind around
them, made of deposits in the outgassed water. No natural water
is pure of these, salts etc.
Additionally, geysers occur only in volcanic areas. There should be
other indications of other volcanism-related features around. None
have been sighted yet, to my knowledge.
> >Chlorophyll? Where? When?
> OK, now I will have to google again....
> Opps, now I am tired, no foind, but HURA!
> Google 'mars chlorophyll spectra' several papers online.
> >
> >Simple as hell, yes. Explain why we don't observe any other signs of
> >life there? And how do you propose this life DOES exist in that
> >environment? Shouldn't there be major outgassing oxygen - where is it?
> Well, plants on earth, some mosses even grow in Siberia.
So you have no explanation to the existence of life on Mars? Okay.
But just for the record: Siberia is not Mars. Even Antarctica is not
Mars, not even close. The driest valleys in Antarctica are much wetter
than the wettest found environment on Mars. Additionally, Antarctica
is covered by a thick oxygen-containing atmosphere, which is connected
to the biospheres on the other continents. It is not as thin as 30 km
above, like the atmosphere on Mars' ground level. It is not almost 100%
carbon dioxide. To expect that there is life thriving there, and that
it has similar chlorophyl as on Earth.. it is quite absurd. Its a
different environment.
chosp
You have done nothing to give reason to shift the burden of proof.
Nothing you have said (written) to date demonstrates the
obviousness of any extant liquid on the surface at that particular
location on Mars.
That is why the burden remains on you.
Jan Panteltje
There is one more remark I want to make, about what is 'white'
and how to adjust your color channel gains for a realistic picture:
I am very sure that when they tested that camera on earth, they have
at some point used a reference color white, say color temperature of
9000 degrees Kelvin for example.
For that color temperature the output from the color arrays is a known.
Say for example (I dunno what color temp they used of cause), it was
calibrated to 1 Volt for R, G, and B for 90000 Kelvin.
At say a distance of a few meter on earth, where atmospheric effects are
negligible.
Then there is no problem if you take the 1V on mars too as top white.
There may be some coloring due to mars atmosphere, but that would not
be that much, there is not of lot of that.
So from those settings is your true color.
Purely scientific.
No need to guess in any way.
What am I missing here?
It is late and I had my coffee..
Vendicar Decarian
"Jan Panteltje" <pNaonSt...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1112377511.bd9475b68fc93c4db6f6290c88aa15d2@teranews...
> That vally is quite deep, and no reason i see why then water should not
flow
> in.
How about dust?
Does that flow in too?
Vendicar Decarian
> Colors may not be really 100% (obviously), but colors do not lie.
Clearly this is an unprocessed image, as the color modeling indicates.
Further nonlinear effects in the censor arrays readily produce color
artifacting.
"Jan Panteltje" <pNaonSt...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1112367980.be9c9cb1c8a59b4a104554d8e7ae3214@teranews...
> Water has been detected by spectrometer, and the Russians have detected
> chlorophyll like spectra as in plant life.
You are thinking of the movie 2010.
"Jan Panteltje" <pNaonSt...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1112367980.be9c9cb1c8a59b4a104554d8e7ae3214@teranews...
> Your picture goes from blue to black to green, not only in one place, but
in
> several, and in a ways that makes perfect sense for plants along a
coastline.
Yup, and a response/brightness profile for the sensor that rises more
rapidly in the green provides the same effect.
Simplest explanation.
Vendicar Decarian
> > Mitchell Jones suffers from a host of other faith based delusions which
a
> > quick web search will readily illustrate.
"Jarmo Korteniemi" <aa....@see.dee.ee> wrote in message
news:d2jrog$f7s$1...@news.oulu.fi...
> Come on, behave nice. Mitchell does have many good points on the
> possibility of water existing there. I bought that, I know it is a
> possibility, even though a remote one..
Sorry. The pressure is too low, and should any liquid water exist it would
readily sublimate. Further, no body of water would be liquid in the cold
temperatures on the surface. This would necessarily mean that the sourface
of the water would not be clear but covered in dust. In addition, any ice
would similarly be muddied by dust throuout, and hence would not be
transparent.
Sorry to burst your bubble.
"Jarmo Korteniemi" <aa....@see.dee.ee> wrote in message
news:d2jrog$f7s$1...@news.oulu.fi...
> There are indications that small amounts of water have recently been
> flooded onto the surface, and the planet experiences some very odd
> conditions once in a while - now we _are_ in a cold period.
Apparently. Although no one seems to know how subsurface water can be so
close to the surface.
However, it isn't really relevant, for water wouldn't be emitted as nice,
blue, clean, perfectly clear water. But emitted as silt infused sludge or
mud.
This is all too clear for anyone of us living in the Reality Based
Community.
The Faithful Fanatics and fools, whine about conspiracy.
Mitchell Jones
fog in the first photo we discussed (see
http://sciforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=3999) had to come from
somewhere. But where? Well, fog consists of tiny water droplets that
condense out of supersaturated air. The process begins with moist air
that is below saturation. Then the temperature drops, usually because
the moist air was warm, and rose to higher, colder altitudes. As the
temperature drops, the air becomes saturated, then supersaturated.
Finally, if the air is above the freezing point of water, fog droplets
appear, and if the air is *not* above the freezing point, we get
snowflakes.
The question is, where did the heat come from that produced the warm,
moist air, deep down in Valles Mareineris?
If there were no heat source down there, then any water would be in the
form of ice at the air temperature of minus 73 degrees C. You don't get
much moisture from wind blowing across ice at that temperature, and any
moisture you get, if it becomes supersaturated at higher, even colder
altitudes, will produce snowflakes rather than fog.
But the photo clearly shows fog, not snow.
To get fog from supersaturated air, the temperature has to be above the
freezing point when the fog forms. The fog droplets may freeze later,
but they have to be liquid when formed, else you get snowflakes, not
fog.
The implication: with an air temperature above the fog of 273 K, or -73
Celsius, fog can form only if there is a heat source down in the canyon,
under the fog.
But what possible heat source might be down there?
I see only one possibility: warm springs which obtain their water from
hydrothermal vents, which in turn are connected to underground
geothermal sources.
Otherwise, how do we get fog, rather than snow?
Could it be that witches will ride brooms if there aren't lakes under
that fog? :-)
--Mitchell Jones
Mitchell Jones
Mitchell Jones <mjo...@21cenlogic.com> wrote:
***{Error alert: that should be 200 K, not 273 K. I have given that
temperature several times in earlier posts as 200 K, and yet here,
somehow, it came out as 273 K. What kind of error is that? I don't know.
Some sort of mental glitch. Similar to a typo, but not exactly the same.
Very frustrating. --MJ}***
Jan Panteltje
Korteniemi <aa....@see.dee.ee> wrote in <d2ke47$or4$1...@news.oulu.fi>:
>> >Simple as hell, yes. Explain why we don't observe any other signs of
>> >life there? And how do you propose this life DOES exist in that
>> >environment? Shouldn't there be major outgassing oxygen - where is it?
>> Well, plants on earth, some mosses even grow in Siberia.
>So you have no explanation to the existence of life on Mars? Okay.
Plants is life... Green.. chlorophyll s[pectra, did you read those papers?
Now that is plenty of proof for me, a LOT better then religiously
denying any evidence as is happening a lot (not accusing you)!
One little more thing about your compression algo on the mars orbiting
camera, I warned clearly long time (Oct 19 1999) ago that not all sorts of
compression can be used in a moving camera like this:
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/sci.space.tech/browse_frm/thread/16b3d78bd8c958f8/ffb3a3ff068ec43c?q=panteltje+mpeg+berkely+codec+mars&rnum=1#ffb3a3ff068ec43c
Also look at what Mr Landis replies.
I am curious what algo ESA uses?
I will look for more old stuff, like that geyser, but not all seems archived,
and have to remember the correct group and keywords, it is likely still on my
harddisk, I changed PC several times since then, but always copied all
archives from my newsreader (easy for me, I wrote it).
Only thing I do not have is what was posted via deja news and agent newsreader..
Sorry, very busy day here, and I cannot spend as much time now on usenet,
but the subject is not closed from my side.
Jan Panteltje
Decarian" <V...@Pyro.net> wrote in <5nn3e.10172$If1.2...@read2.cgocable.net>:
If top surface is wet an frozen, no.
Locally a place may melt, and from there the water then flows in.
This has been proposed by NASA IIRC.
Jarmo Korteniemi
> > h0022_0000_nadir_original.jpg [*]
> >The original nadir (straight down-pointing) image of the area.
> >THIS image has 12.5 meter/pixel resolution. Not the PR image.
> This is what I hoped it would be, I am viewing it in Linux with XV,
> it was to big for the ee viewer (I used the gamma curves of that),
> but this is clearly like the original, only BW.
> The dark areas are there as expected.
It _is_ the original, only with map projection.
> >You'll find it out if you read the PR image caption a bit better.
> ?
The resolution of the PR image was reduced. The original resolution
is better.
> >h0022_0000_nadir_dark_enhanced.jpg
> OK, now we see what looks like some depth sort of channels / areas in the dark,
> still what I would expect.
I suggest that you read the ESA SP-1240 article (search with google)
on the HRSC instrument.
> >h0022_0000_rgb_original.jpg [*]
> WOW, nice and blue streaming clear water ;-)
> More then I expected.
<sarcasm attempt>
Yes, of course. Blue has to be water. Can't be anything else.
I suspect that if I show you an image of a field full of blue
flowers, you'll immediately say "water!"...
</sarcasm attempt>
> >The unprocessed (but combined) color composite of the R, G and B
> >channels. Resolution 50 m/pixel. Is this what you would expect Mars
> >to look like? I didn't think so...
> Why not, you mean more red? more red is not less blue, I'd say less green...
> would do that here.
So it'a okay to reduce the effect of the green channel "cause it looks
like it should be adjusted", but not for the blue channel? Weird..
> >h0022_0000_rgb_autolevels.jpg
> >...which is why I let Photoshop do some automatic level adjustments,
> >seen in this image. Still a bit off...
> Right, but 'auto white' is a bit a gamble, we do not know what areas are
> really white, so this is dubious to say the least.
> >h0022_0000_rgb_enhanced2.jpg
> OK, it remains subjective of cause.
> As you (or photoshop) adjust gain for each color, the low level blue is
> little affected.
> >...so I modified the image by hand. This pleases the eye most. And
> >I do know for a fact, that the PR images are done in a similar
> >fashion - one's eye is the color calibrator. You know why? Because
> >there is no good color calibration available yet. That's what I've
> >been telling you all along, but you just can't except that, can ya?
> Accept no WHAT? So far it is exactly as expected!
So... let me get this straight: you expect the colors to be
not-real-colors (as you stated above)? But still you say that the
_colors_ prove that there is water? Hmm.. in other words, not
knowing the _amount_ (or gain value, or intensity) of the real-
life-blue does not affect the result you get from the image?
Please explain.
> > h0022_0000_cut_red.tif [*]
> A bit of more red in the depth ...
> > h0022_0000_cut_green.tif [*]
> First I thought 'noise' but no, PLANTS!!! there are lots of 'areas'
> lighting up in green, and normal ground is NOT green.
> This also sort of nihilates the green 'artefacts' as these areas are
> everywhere.
> Of cause in normal light, we can say: 0.11 B + 0.59 G + 0.3 R = Y
> So expect a stronger green signal anyways.
So.. if I give you an image of a brown surface, imaged with r, g, and b
, you will say (looking at the g image) that there are plants there,
because the green channel has some brightnes in it???
> > h0022_0000_cut_blue.tif [*]
> OK,
> well artefacts, the thing (camera) sensor array slides over the area.
> It picks up (in this case) blue light and the variations of that.
> We wil have to accept that it actually represents what it sees.
> You technical explanation for what you call artefacts please.
The jpeg (or whatever compression) blocks are not on the ground, thus
they are _artefacts_ created by the compression algorythm.
> >Cut-outs from the three (R, G and B) color images from the same area.
> >Saved in tiff format to emphasize the fact that there are artefacts
> >in these images, whether you like it or not. Ever heard of image
> >packing, Jan, in your 37 years of working with cameras? And if you
> >now decide to start critisizing about the decision to pack the images,
> >well go ahead. It's stupid.
> Oops I did not know you did something evil like that ;-)
"Do not speak if you don't know what you are speaking about", said
someone wise somewhere..
> >But, at the same time, the packing only
> >effects areas where no surface details are seen with the particular
> >image resolution.
> I cannot judge that at all without knowing the exact algo, like to share?
> The we can run a test one some prepared material (like a picture of a lake
> with bushes around it for example).
> Now that is fair and realistic do you not think so?
I do not know the algorythm. I only know what it does to images. Ask
the Germans who made the camera and the software.
> >And most importantly, it leads to increased amount
> >of data which can be obtained. So far several hundred gigabytes have
> >been obtained - and the land area which has been imaged with better
> >resolution (even with the packing) than ever before, is somewhere
> >in the order of 1.5 times the land area of Russia.
> OK, bandwidth is always a problem.
> I'd personally go for true uncompressed....
Well, wouldn't we all.
> >[*] All the processing that has been done is changing the image to
> >map-projection and some noise reduction. The packing effects (which
> >I earlier referred to as artifacts) are due to image packing onboard
> >the spacecraft before downlinking the images to Earth.
> I really like to see your packing algo.
http://berlinadmin.dlr.de/Missions/express -> contact the technical team.
> >mola_topography.jpg
> >Lastly, a MOLA topography of the area. It shows that the areas of the
> >darkest deposits is NOT the lowest region.
> Yes, good one, well, does that thing measure to bottom of a fluid?
> It is also possible to have different height lakes close to each other
> (for example where I live).
> Dunno in this case, no contest.
How do you explain that, if the laser altimeter measures to the bottom of
the fluid, there is a ridge _exactly_ where the dark areas are? If it were
the water you propose, the darker areas should be the deepest water areas.
And, if the laser bouces off the lake surface, then it should be flat.
Kind of a weird dilemma, doncha think?
And, FYI, those central ridges in dry channels are a pretty common thing
in Martian outflow channels.
> BTW, you are aware if the camera voltage versus light output is linear, that
> for a normal display on a TV / CRT you have to use ALWAYS gamma 1/2.2?
> This is to compensate for the CRT brightnes versus voltage curve of x to the
> power 2.2 (and actually the way TV is transmitted too).
> If you do not do that, all you black will have no detail.
> So what gamma did you use?
Didn't check. Beside the point. Black has _always_ no detail, whereas
dark grayscale values have detail, and the image is processable so that
those details are observable.
Jarmo
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Jarmo Korteniemi * http://www.student.oulu.fi/~jkorteni *
Planetology group, Astronomy, University of Oulu, Finland
s-posti / email: jarmo DOT#1 korteniemi AT oulu DOT#2 fi
puhelin / phone: +358 (45) 6362264
huone / room: TÄ215 (klo 12-20, ajoittain aiemminkin)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Do you believe in astrology? Jupiter exerts less gravitational influence
over a human body than does an angry rhino less than two meters away...
--
Tuumasta toimeen on yhtä pitkä matka kuin täältä iäisyyteen.
- Oululehti 9.2.05
Jarmo Korteniemi
> I am very sure that when they tested that camera on earth, they have
> at some point used a reference color white, say color temperature of
> 9000 degrees Kelvin for example.
> For that color temperature the output from the color arrays is a known.
> Say for example (I dunno what color temp they used of cause), it was
> calibrated to 1 Volt for R, G, and B for 90000 Kelvin.
> At say a distance of a few meter on earth, where atmospheric effects are
> negligible.
> Then there is no problem if you take the 1V on mars too as top white.
> There may be some coloring due to mars atmosphere, but that would not
> be that much, there is not of lot of that.
> So from those settings is your true color.
> Purely scientific.
> No need to guess in any way.
> What am I missing here?
> It is late and I had my coffee..
Yes, they did that to the instrument while on Earth. But, no,
unfortunately, the instrument behaves a bit differently now that it is in
orbit. What can ya do... :/
Firstly, remember that HRSC is a line-scan camera which takes images with
a width of ~60+ km, and with a length of several hundred to several
thousand km, with a resolution of up to 10 m /pixel.
There have been some problems with the brightness of each picture (were
it a nadir, stereo, or color channel) length-wise. So, there is a slight,
gradual change in the individual images created by the individual ccds.
It is not a feature on the ground, but of the image.
Additionally, there are effects of the width of the image. One side of the
image is often much darker than the other.
And, finally, especially the blue channel has artefacts which result in
dark or bright vertical systematical lines in the image especially in poor
lighting conditions; this has probably to do with the sensitivity of the
individual pixels of the blue channel ccd.
These problems are effects of the curvature of the planet, the warming of
the instrument during use, and, most importantly, the unexpected
changed behaviour of the instrument in orbit. These are being looked at,
by about 20 people who know their stuff, but no ultimate correction result
has been achieved.
So, no 'white calibration' is possible, at the moment. Nor is any color
calibration possible. Annoying, but true. Sorry.
Jan Panteltje
Decarian" <V...@Pyro.net> wrote in <Ckn3e.10171$If1.2...@read2.cgocable.net>:
No
>
> Simplest explanation.
Simpler is that you have no clue, read the chlorphyll papers, get an
education about chemistry and cameras.
Jan Panteltje
http://www.planetarymysteries.com/mars/DiPJPL.html
These are 2 pics, taken 4.5 seconds after each other.
Note the red circle in the top one?
Enlarge it. Did somebody draw a cirlce with a red pecil?
Or is it hot magma, and a steam cloud originates from there?
Mystery sort of.
Later alligator.
bz
> Hey I found the geyser and the red dot!
>
> http://www.planetarymysteries.com/mars/DiPJPL.html
>
> These are 2 pics, taken 4.5 seconds after each other.
> Note the red circle in the top one?
> Enlarge it. Did somebody draw a cirlce with a red pecil?
With photoshop or some similar program.
> Or is it hot magma,
not likely as the picture is monochrome.
> and a steam cloud originates from there?
Looks like the web page author drew a red circle. A circle, not a dot.
there to draw our attention to the white area just to the right that the
author thinks is evidence of a geiser. It could be. It might not be.
Jan Panteltje
Korteniemi <aa....@see.dee.ee> wrote in <d2m0tm$48u$1...@news.oulu.fi>:
OK, I have read all this first, but I will try to give a reply that
makes sense at the relevant points, to make it easier..
>It _is_ the original, only with map projection.
OK, that is what you said.
>> >You'll find it out if you read the PR image caption a bit better.
>> ?
>
>The resolution of the PR image was reduced. The original resolution
>is better.
Fine.
>I suggest that you read the ESA SP-1240 article (search with google)
>on the HRSC instrument.
This will take some time and googling.
> >h0022_0000_rgb_original.jpg [*]
>> WOW, nice and blue streaming clear water ;-)
>> More then I expected.
>
><sarcasm attempt>
>Yes, of course. Blue has to be water. Can't be anything else.
>I suspect that if I show you an image of a field full of blue
>flowers, you'll immediately say "water!"...
></sarcasm attempt>
Hey, I was joking (note the ';-)' !
<oil on mars>
Now that we are on the subject of jokes, today I went up the roof of my house
(it is partly a flat roof) and applied 3 liters of fluid tar to it.
It is BLACK.
(To make it water proof, >>earth<< birds use to wash themselves in the
pool of water that accumulates there often, and then pick holes in the
top layer.... This will teach them...
Now because I am sure from a satellite look (HELLO NSA NASA) it will look like
a few square meters of black, we can deduce there is OIL there.
In the same way there is OIL in that vally on mars.
(Actually tar is an oily product).
</oil on mars>
>> >The unprocessed (but combined) color composite of the R, G and B
>> >channels. Resolution 50 m/pixel. Is this what you would expect Mars
>> >to look like? I didn't think so...
>> Why not, you mean more red? more red is not less blue, I'd say less green...
>> would do that here.
>
>So it'a okay to reduce the effect of the green channel "cause it looks
>like it should be adjusted", but not for the blue channel? Weird..
You did read my other post about color calibration to say 9000 K did you?
I dare say here that you just made pretty pictures!
Feel offended if you like, but I classify those pictures as cheap PR coloring.
>not-real-colors (as you stated above)? But still you say that the
>_colors_ prove that there is water? Hmm.. in other words, not
>knowing the _amount_ (or gain value, or intensity) of the real-
>life-blue does not affect the result you get from the image?
>Please explain.
When we look at the output of the 3 (leave out any IR for a moment) color
sensors, and use the data that you (hopefully) have for calibration, you
should get a REAL color as somebody on that satellite above mars sees the
ground.
If you change gain in any of these color channels, you get wrong color --
If you changed the individual gamma correction for each color (so not all at
the same time) you can make any effect / color you like.
One should NOT do this.
Did you?
To make top white a bit red or green or blue, by changing individual color
gain A LITTLE is no problem.
If you had changed gain a lot, there would be additional noise in the
channel that was amplified most (blue here if I get you right), and there
is not.
But you ended up (with default settings) with a greenish mars.
You thought, 'hey I want mars to be reddish' and started changing things.
1) did you change individual gamma?
2) what changes exactly (in percent) were made?
3) Did you adjust gamma 1/2.2 as required for publishing it?
If (1) the result is of no value.
If (3) there is no detail in dark areas (near black).
And I would like to know how come it was green, what was the calibration of
the camera?
>So.. if I give you an image of a brown surface, imaged with r, g, and b
>, you will say (looking at the g image) that there are plants there,
>because the green channel has some brightnes in it???
Sorry, I did not say that, you do.
>The jpeg (or whatever compression) blocks are not on the ground, thus
>they are _artefacts_ created by the compression algorythm.
It is motion related, and even for jpg to 'go green' in a pixel in this
case requires a rather strong green component.
This is known,. see the link to the discussion in sci.spacetech I posted
in the other posting, about compression for the mars camera from NASA,
and why wavelet encoding was mentioned, and actually used on mars.
>> >well go ahead. It's stupid.
>> Oops I did not know you did something evil like that ;-)
>
>"Do not speak if you don't know what you are speaking about", said
>someone wise somewhere..
See that link, I was there before you even knew what it was.
I think you still do not know what it was actually.
>I do not know the algorythm. I only know what it does to images. Ask
>the Germans who made the camera and the software.
Exactly.
The teams should get together and THEN make an image.
Else it is worth very little.
Errors like that is why acceleration sensors are mounted wrong way around,
causing crashes, why engines switch off because of double activation of
microswitches, why they use pounds and not kilograms... No oversight.
>> I'd personally go for true uncompressed....
>
>Well, wouldn't we all.
A bit of brains, and not just taking 2 undergraduate students do a new
project, but a more in depth knowledge of the stuff, would have allowed you
to use uncompressed anyways, at least as an option.
>http://berlinadmin.dlr.de/Missions/express -> contact the technical team.
No, why bother, you want fake PR images, you have them.
Why not paint some elephants in it, sure will have a great press value.
>> Dunno in this case, no contest.
>
>How do you explain that, if the laser altimeter measures to the bottom of
>the fluid, there is a ridge _exactly_ where the dark areas are? If it were
>the water you propose, the darker areas should be the deepest water areas.
>And, if the laser bouces off the lake surface, then it should be flat.
>Kind of a weird dilemma, doncha think?
>And, FYI, those central ridges in dry channels are a pretty common thing
>in Martian outflow channels.
I dunno, let's go there an see if we can catch some fish.
>> BTW, you are aware if the camera voltage versus light output is linear, that
>> for a normal display on a TV / CRT you have to use ALWAYS gamma 1/2.2?
>> This is to compensate for the CRT brightnes versus voltage curve of x to the
>> power 2.2 (and actually the way TV is transmitted too).
>> If you do not do that, all you black will have no detail.
>> So what gamma did you use?
>
>Didn't check. Beside the point.
Well, really, it is a very important thing.
I hope you will read up on it and do some experiments.
> Black has _always_ no detail, whereas
Black... but there IS a sensor output in that area, as your own
pics show, so it is VERY important to get ANY realistic display.
Jarmo Korteniemi
> Jarmo Korteniemi <aa....@see.dee.ee> wrote:
> >If you mean that the lowest topography is occupied
> > by the seemingly black material, and going upwards it is followed by blue,
> > green and the highest areas are yellowish. I see no reason why this
> > could NOT
> > or on the other hand SHOULD be the case...? Either way is quite
> > possible. The
> > colors may or may not be dependent of the topography.
> ***{OK, let's compare two hypotheses.
> Hypothesis #1: It's not a lake, but a series of flaws in your camera
> caused it (a) to falsely color the shallow portion of the bottom in a
> dimmer version of its true color, which is yellow; (b) to falsely color
> the slightly deeper levels in a still dimmer shade of yellow tinged with
> bluegreen; (c) to falsely color even deeper levels in bluegreen without
> yellow; (d) to falsely color the next lower levels in blue without
> green; and (e) to falsely color the deepest levels in black.
I said nothing like that, I didn't speak about the camera falsely
colouring anything. I was talking about color-topography dependancy,
and whether it has anything to do with your hypotheses about a lake.
Damn, it's like talking to a wall or a 2.5-year old.
> Hypothesis #2: It's a lake.
> Which hypothesis is the simplest explanation of the facts?
Actually, from your two given hypotheses, the first one is more
probable. However, if you include the third option, that it is
colouring due to some other effect than wither a flaw in the camera,
or a lake, is in my opinion the best one. And my explanation is this:
we see lots of surface colouring differences on Mars, often related
to some other surface textures or morphologies. We have, however,
NOT seen any indications of present liquid water on the surface.
So... (please think about what I said for 5 seconds) ...it is most
plausible that the surface coloring differences are real, but not
related to liquid water. Please take a look at the MOC NA and MEX
HRSC nadir images for the surface TEXTURE in the area in question,
and can you then talk about real proof of whatever is down there???
Jan Panteltje
Korteniemi <aa....@see.dee.ee> wrote in <d2m36h$4iq$1...@news.oulu.fi>:
>These problems are effects of the curvature of the planet, the warming of
>the instrument during use, and, most importantly, the unexpected
>changed behaviour of the instrument in orbit. These are being looked at,
>by about 20 people who know their stuff, but no ultimate correction result
>has been achieved.
>
>So, no 'white calibration' is possible, at the moment. Nor is any color
>calibration possible. Annoying, but true. Sorry.
hey, I was just bashing at you about that in the other reply...
There exists an interesting paper by Dr. Levin (the one from the early mars
experiment that was positive about life, the one that heated up the ground),
where he goes to VERY great length to evaluate those EXPECTED calibration
problems.
Of cause there is always a short time in which things have to be designed,
so errors creep in, I dunno a link, but lemme google for you:
Here you go:
http://mars.spherix.com/spie2003/SPIE_2003_Color_Paper.htm
I very strongly suggest you and the other teams read it.
Jan Panteltje
http://mars.spherix.com/spie2003/SPIE_2003_Color_Paper.htm
I very strongly suggest you and the other teams read it.
I love this I love this:
From that paper by Dr. Levin:
<quote>
4. INFORMATION FROM THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE
There exists one other important piece of data concerning the scattered
light in the Martian sky. Every 2 years, at Mars and Earth conjunction,
images of the planet are taken by the Hubble Space Telescope as shown in
Figure 8. The resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope in sufficient to
allow imaging of the planets limb as seen in Figure 8. The Hubble Space
Telescope has onboard spectrometers which are used to study the Doppler red
shift of distant stars. These spectrometers can be used to calibrate the
light reaching the imaging camera on the HST. The spectrometers are capable
of looking at the same stars as the imaging camera and therefore provide an
excellent calibration. A study of these images was made by Philip
James[18], who found that scattering of the Martian atmosphere as seen from
Earth is predominantly blue. This adds another constraint on the broken
calibration link in Figure 4. If the results of the Hubble Space Telescope
are correct, the Martian sky cannot be as red as shown in many published
images, and the illumination from the sky cannot be contributing to the red
dominance of the color calibration charts.
Both the Hubble images and the performance of the Pathfinder solar cells
argue for a much greener and bluer environment than is currently shown in
lander images. However, neither of these measurements is sufficiently
definitive to repair this broken link and allow the production of a reliable
calibration. This uncertainty cannot be resolved until a Martian lander
measures the spectrum of solar illumination.
</quote>
Hey, and your original RGB was green!
Maybe it is the correct color!
No need to make it reddish for PR!
Personally I trust the sensors / chips before any theory.
Mitchell Jones
Jarmo Korteniemi <aa....@see.dee.ee> wrote:
> In alt.sci.planetary
> <mjones-7C256B....@spectator.sj.sys.us.xo.net> stated that:
> > Jarmo Korteniemi <aa....@see.dee.ee> wrote:
> > >If you mean that the lowest topography is occupied
> > > by the seemingly black material, and going upwards it is followed by
> > > blue,
> > > green and the highest areas are yellowish. I see no reason why this
> > > could NOT
> > > or on the other hand SHOULD be the case...? Either way is quite
> > > possible. The
> > > colors may or may not be dependent of the topography.
>
> > ***{OK, let's compare two hypotheses.
> > Hypothesis #1: It's not a lake, but a series of flaws in your camera
> > caused it (a) to falsely color the shallow portion of the bottom in a
> > dimmer version of its true color, which is yellow; (b) to falsely color
> > the slightly deeper levels in a still dimmer shade of yellow tinged with
> > bluegreen; (c) to falsely color even deeper levels in bluegreen without
> > yellow; (d) to falsely color the next lower levels in blue without
> > green; and (e) to falsely color the deepest levels in black.
>
> I said nothing like that, I didn't speak about the camera falsely
> colouring anything.
***{You didn't use the expression "false color," but the entire focus of
your presentation was on the camera, with the point being that we
couldn't trust the colors we were seeing on the image, and thus could
not infer liquid water from the patterns that were present. For example,
you said: " it is NOT as blue in real life as shown in the PR image."
The entire thrust of your attempt to explain away the implications of
that color pattern--the pattern of light absorption in water--was that
the pattern in question was an artifact of the image processing and
would not have been seen by a human eye if one had been riding along
with Mars Express when the picture was taken. --MJ}***
I was talking about color-topography dependancy,
> and whether it has anything to do with your hypotheses about a lake.
***{So now you are saying that the colors shown in the photo are true
and accurate, but there is no water in the alleged lake? In other words,
the colors on the photo result from random geological processes, rather
than from flawed color processing in the camera?
OK, then we have two hypotheses.
Hypothesis #1: It's not a lake. However, a series of independent
geological processes taking place over hundreds of millions of years
produced rock layering in the area of the supposed "lake" such that the
color is (a) a dimmer version of the yellow coloration outside the
"lake," in its shallow areas; (b) a still dimmer shade of yellow tinged
with bluegreen slightly further down; (c) a bluegreen without yellow in
layers even further down; (d) a blue without green in levels that are
deeper still; and (e) black in the deepest levels.
Hypothesis #2: It's a lake.
Which hypothesis is the simplest explanation of the facts?
--Mitchell Jones}***
> Damn, it's like talking to a wall or a 2.5-year old.
***{No it isn't. The reality is that you ignored my response to your
first message, until now. I have no problem at all in accepting this new
interpretation of your position. Nothing changes at all, regardless of
whether you say the lake doesn't exist and the color pattern comes from
flaws in the camera, or that the lake doesn't exist and the color
pattern comes from geology. Either way, the alternative hypothesis--that
it's a lake--is the simplest explanation of the facts. --MJ}***
> > Hypothesis #2: It's a lake.
> > Which hypothesis is the simplest explanation of the facts?
>
> Actually, from your two given hypotheses, the first one is more
> probable.
***{It is obviously *possible* that geology could produce the observed
pattern. There could be a layer of black minerals, with a layer of blue
minerals on top of it, and a layer of bluegreen minerals on top of that,
and yellow-blue-green minerals over that, etc., so that as the area
weathered over the millennia, the resulting pattern would match the
pattern of light absorption in water. However, any sort of brightly
colored layer is rare, geologically speaking. Most rock layers consist
of mixed material and exhibit the dull colors that we refer to as "earth
tones." Hence the likelihood of a series of such layers is itself very
low, regardless of the sequence of the colors, and the idea that such a
sequence might match the pattern of light absorption in water is simply
absurd. If you claim otherwise, I challenge you to cite a single
instance. Find me a field geologist who has ever seen such a formation,
anywhere on earth, in any mine shaft, on any cliff face--anywhere at
all. The fact of the matter is that you can't do it, because it has
never happened. --MJ}***
However, if you include the third option, that it is
> colouring due to some other effect than wither a flaw in the camera,
> or a lake, is in my opinion the best one.
***{The third option, as already noted, is geology. The observed pattern
is either due to accidental errors in the color processing, or to the
happenstances of geology, or it is due to the selective absorption of
light during passage through water. Of those three possibilities, only
the last is within the realm of reason.
Here is why:
(1) We know Mars has a molten core, and that the Tharsis volcanos have
been active in recent geological time. There are, for example, lava
flows on Mt. Olympus that show no cratering, implying eruptions that
occurred essentially yesterday, as time is measured by geologists.
(2) We know that Mars once had enormous oceans. The west flank of
Olympus, for example, shows towering cliffs that were obviously carved
by wave action. There are other areas where surface ice shows cracking
that matches the patterns of pack ice on Earth, and indicates drifting
icebergs and a sea of liquid water below--which means: there is a
geothermal heat source under that sea, which keeps it from freezing.
(3) We know that Martian surface pressure, in low lying areas, is
sufficient to support the existence of liquid water, if that water is
heated geothermally.
What this all means is simple: there are going to be hydrothermal vents
on Mars, and some of them will be in low lying areas. Result: there will
be pools of liquid water at those locations. To suppose otherwise would
be to suppose a miracle.
--Mitchell Jones}***
And my explanation is this:
> we see lots of surface colouring differences on Mars, often related
> to some other surface textures or morphologies. We have, however,
> NOT seen any indications of present liquid water on the surface.
***{Yes we have. To suppose that the pattern of light absorption in
water, plainly apparent in that photo taken in Reull Vallis, is due to
flaws in the camera or to geology is simply absurd. To suppose that
hydrothermal vents never occur, anywhere on Mars, at low elevations, is
even more absurd. Such a supposition amounts to claiming a miracle has
taken place, and as such is an extraordinary claim requiring
extraordinary proof. Lakes on Mars are entirely to be expected, and the
photographic evidence of their existence obtained by Mars Express is
entirely unsurprising. --MJ}***
> So... (please think about what I said for 5 seconds
***{I have thought about it, and have responded to it in detail. I
suggest that you respond to what I have said in detail. --MJ}***
) ...it is most
> plausible that the surface coloring differences are real, but not
> related to liquid water. Please take a look at the MOC NA and MEX
> HRSC nadir images for the surface TEXTURE in the area in question,
> and can you then talk about real proof of whatever is down there???
***{If you have a reference to something specific which you think
supports your position, cite it, and I will take a look. --MJ}***
Jarmo Korteniemi
> Here you go:
> http://mars.spherix.com/spie2003/SPIE_2003_Color_Paper.htm
> I very strongly suggest you and the other teams read it.
Thank you for the link. However, I'd prefer if this paper had appeared in
some peer-reviewed paper.. I didn't notice that there were any hints of
this having been done. The reason for this preferrance is the scientific
principle, basically: Anybody can make claims about almost anything, and
put up a website on that. But, if he is scientifically sound, his ideas
WILL also go through the peer-review process.
The scientific method requires that if one is to be taken seriously
by their fellow scientists, one should prove "beyond a reasonable
doubt" that the thing they are describing is real and not just
imagination, false interpretations, bad calculations or even a
hoax. This method, even though it is a slow process, has been proven
to work. It has its flaws, I admit it.
I warn you too, if you want to stay on the side of proven facts, to try
and search for the information you require from trustworthy sources.
> Hey, and your original RGB was green!
> Maybe it is the correct color!
> No need to make it reddish for PR!
> Personally I trust the sensors / chips before any theory.
Before reading the paper through entirely with thought, I have this
much to say: As I stated earlier, there are errors in the HRSC images.
They are unprecedented, and ones that haven't been calibrated or
corrected yet. And if you think that the real-life colors look like
the Reull Vallis raw rgb image I provided you with, you are mistaking
very badly, unfortunately. Some HRSC raw images appear as "Mars"-red,
other images as blue as the ocean. But, before you start jumping up and
down and screaming "it's real, I tell you", I can say that all these
different color images have been taken at the same place, just during
different orbits. And no changes in the surface are observed. It's like
somebody is putting a different coloured glass in front of the camera
each orbit. The colour you see, in the original images already, is an
error, a somehow calibratable error I think, but one that has not yet
been calibrated. Capish?
Furthermore, I have looked at Mars with my own eyes, through good
astronomical binoculars which cause no color shifts or other
distortions, through several telescopes, and compared what I have seen
to the Hubble images. I have also compared them to the images provided
by the Mars orbiting satellites. I agree, Mars is not _as_ red as some
of the most striking Hubble pictures, it is rather a mixture of reds,
browns and yellows and grays. Do my eyes need color-correcting towards
green and blue?
No, I do not believe (or rather, I have not seen evidence of such
things) that there is a predominantly BLUE or GREEN area on Mars. And
if there is, it is far easier to prove that this abnormal color is due
to non-biological surface properties than just plain old Martian life.
The scientific method, again, is this: If you have something new to
show to the world, you should prove it so that your fellow peers (or
even a considerable fraction, preferrably the majority of them) can
be convinced, after close review, of this phenomena.
Jarmo Korteniemi
> ***{You didn't use the expression "false color," but the entire focus of
> your presentation was on the camera, with the point being that we
> couldn't trust the colors we were seeing on the image, and thus could
> not infer liquid water from the patterns that were present. For example,
> you said: " it is NOT as blue in real life as shown in the PR image."
> The entire thrust of your attempt to explain away the implications of
> that color pattern--the pattern of light absorption in water--was that
> the pattern in question was an artifact of the image processing and
> would not have been seen by a human eye if one had been riding along
> with Mars Express when the picture was taken. --MJ}***
> I was talking about color-topography dependancy,
> > and whether it has anything to do with your hypotheses about a lake.
> ***{So now you are saying that the colors shown in the photo are true
> and accurate, but there is no water in the alleged lake? In other words,
> the colors on the photo result from random geological processes, rather
> than from flawed color processing in the camera?
No, I am not saying that the colors are correct. I was merely
talking about a different matter; talking about the topography
dependance of color. I was saying that coloring does not have to
follow, or _not_ follow topography. Both instances are widely
known. For example, in the deserts of Utah/Arizona you have hills of
redder color, superposed on a brighter (yellowish) desert floor.
And vice versa. Sedimentary deposition, cased by a variety of
processes, results in different coloured deposits on top of each
each others. Also known as layering. Several links down below.
And, if you go to a place where you have a dike of darker color
material in the brighter bedrock, and erode this region to be flat,
you get a flat surface with color differences. The erosion can, again
be done by several processes, for example weathering, glaciation, etc.
Geology 101, shouldn't be that hard to understand.
Damn. To be clear, let me draw you a map of my statement:
<map>
The colors in the PR image are not accurate. The colors show differences in
the surface properties, yes: There are areas which reflect more blue light
than other areas, and some that reflect red light less, etc etc. The HRSC
raw images show those variations, yes. BUT, simply combining those images
does not produce the real-life colors one's eyes could see on the ground
from MEX orbit. In other words, there are differences on the ground,
observable differences. Those differences are imaged and recorded by MEX
HRSC. Those differences are seen in the images of that instrument. But
you will not be able to make a real-color image from those images, not
yet, because no calibration has been achieved. No-one can, except by
accident, and not knowing it. :)
Additionally, the differences appear to follow topography, as seen in the
image I provided you with (link to my message down below). But the darkest
region seems to follow the high elevation, not a flat surface nor a
depression. It follows a central ridge on the Reull Vallis canyon.
</map>
Link to two of my previous messages which you apparently ignored:
Raw images from the MEX HRSC showing the false coloration effects and the
compression effects in the region, plus a MGS MOLA topography showing that
the dark regions are mostly higher in elevation than the surroundings:
http://groups.google.fi/groups?hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&selm=d2jp0f%24ejc%241%40news.oulu.fi
Images from the surface, MGS MOC NA close-ups, with no apparent
indications of liquid substances:
http://groups.google.fi/groups?hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&selm=d2htvv%2411k%241%40news.oulu.fi
If the links do not work (the address seem odd to me :) just say so and
I'll repost them here now.
> OK, then we have two hypotheses.
> Hypothesis #1: It's not a lake. However, a series of independent
> geological processes taking place over hundreds of millions of years
> produced rock layering in the area of the supposed "lake" such that the
> color is (a) a dimmer version of the yellow coloration outside the
> "lake," in its shallow areas; (b) a still dimmer shade of yellow tinged
> with bluegreen slightly further down; (c) a bluegreen without yellow in
> layers even further down; (d) a blue without green in levels that are
> deeper still; and (e) black in the deepest levels.
Just one main geological process will suffice: a big flood, or several.
Something has carved Reull, the easiest explanation is water. Lots of it.
You see the flow marks on the floor (MOC NA links above)? Now, as this water
flowed, it probably both eroded the surface and transported materials
downslope. The dark deposits may be salts or silts or muds in that flowing
water, maybe deposited at the later /latest stages of the flow - and/or -
deposits left behind by the drying stages of that flood: the drying lakes
with salt-saturated water. Take your pick.
> Hypothesis #2: It's a lake.
> Which hypothesis is the simplest explanation of the facts?
Read above.
> ***{No it isn't. The reality is that you ignored my response to your
> first message, until now. I have no problem at all in accepting this new
> interpretation of your position. Nothing changes at all, regardless of
> whether you say the lake doesn't exist and the color pattern comes from
> flaws in the camera, or that the lake doesn't exist and the color
> pattern comes from geology. Either way, the alternative hypothesis--that
> it's a lake--is the simplest explanation of the facts. --MJ}***
Sorry about ignoring you. This thread is growing so fast. I've been
preoccupied with Jan's messages.
It is far easier to explain the formations by other means than by a
lake. This is because of the topography, and the morphology of the
surface. You have not commented on either. Please do so. Links above.
> ***{It is obviously *possible* that geology could produce the observed
> pattern. There could be a layer of black minerals, with a layer of blue
> minerals on top of it, and a layer of bluegreen minerals on top of that,
> and yellow-blue-green minerals over that, etc., so that as the area
> weathered over the millennia, the resulting pattern would match the
> pattern of light absorption in water. However, any sort of brightly
> colored layer is rare, geologically speaking. Most rock layers consist
> of mixed material and exhibit the dull colors that we refer to as "earth
> tones." Hence the likelihood of a series of such layers is itself very
> low, regardless of the sequence of the colors, and the idea that such a
> sequence might match the pattern of light absorption in water is simply
> absurd. If you claim otherwise, I challenge you to cite a single
> instance. Find me a field geologist who has ever seen such a formation,
> anywhere on earth, in any mine shaft, on any cliff face--anywhere at
> all. The fact of the matter is that you can't do it, because it has
> never happened. --MJ}***
Here is what a quick search with google resulted in, from the net. Layering
in almost all its glory.
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jjk29/Painted%20Desert/pd%20tire%20tracks.jpg
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jjk29/
http://www.amwest-travel.com/awt_painted.html
http://www.arizona-leisure.com/painted-desert.html
Firstly, images of a desert in Arizona. The first surface is covered by tons
of dark rocks, removed (pushed downwards?) by the tire tracks and revealing the
underlying brighter sand.
http://www.seakayak.ws/photocat.nsf/webphotos/F5F8CF7E6C81E2E285256B9B006967F7/$file/baja02-10.jpg
More layers, this time at sea-shore.
http://www.gesource.ac.uk/satellite/149.jpg
Do you see the different colouring at the river delta?
http://my.erinet.com/~jwoolf/geocol2.jpg
And layering.
Remember, the Reull Vallis image is a false-color image. Not real-life.
Exaggerated.
Continuing the explanation I have for the darker deposits there:
The gradual change between the dark deposits and the surrounding brighter
material is due to either of two possibilities: Bright material is
superposing the darker underlying unit, or the dark deposits are
superposing the brighter unit. Whichever is the case, the overlying
layer is gradually superposing the underlying unit.
> However, if you include the third option, that it is
> > colouring due to some other effect than wither a flaw in the camera,
> > or a lake, is in my opinion the best one.
> ***{The third option, as already noted, is geology. The observed pattern
> is either due to accidental errors in the color processing, or to the
> happenstances of geology, or it is due to the selective absorption of
> light during passage through water. Of those three possibilities, only
> the last is within the realm of reason.
> Here is why:
> (1) We know Mars has a molten core, and that the Tharsis volcanos have
> been active in recent geological time. There are, for example, lava
> flows on Mt. Olympus that show no cratering, implying eruptions that
> occurred essentially yesterday, as time is measured by geologists.
Yes. We also do know, that there are no observed vents near Reull Vallis.
Or I know that, at least.
> (2) We know that Mars once had enormous oceans. The west flank of
> Olympus, for example, shows towering cliffs that were obviously carved
> by wave action. There are other areas where surface ice shows cracking
> that matches the patterns of pack ice on Earth, and indicates drifting
> icebergs and a sea of liquid water below--which means: there is a
> geothermal heat source under that sea, which keeps it from freezing.
Oceans are a possibility, but lets not get into that. Massive amounts of
water in the past is for sure. I am not convinced about that pack-ice, but
they've built up quite a strong case.
> (3) We know that Martian surface pressure, in low lying areas, is
> sufficient to support the existence of liquid water, if that water is
> heated geothermally.
Hmm... basically, yes.
> What this all means is simple: there are going to be hydrothermal vents
> on Mars, and some of them will be in low lying areas. Result: there will
> be pools of liquid water at those locations. To suppose otherwise would
> be to suppose a miracle.
The only problem you have is to show the existence of geothermal vents in
the area. Oh, and the existence of the lake, from surface images - not
false-color interpretation.
Why can't you (MJ and Jan) discuss this thing like normal people, and
not like some fanatic religious people? You all the time seem to shout:
"believe! there is no other possibility than the lake- repent, you are
wrong!". You seem to be too intellegent to do that.
If you indeed can build a case on behalf of the lake, I'm all for it,
that would be cool. But if you ignore facts which I give you (topo and
surface images) and keep going on about "the colors, the colors!", then
your idea can easily be proven wrong. Even though you dismiss everything
as being absurd. That just ain't gonna cut it.
> > And my explanation is this:
> > we see lots of surface colouring differences on Mars, often related
> > to some other surface textures or morphologies. We have, however,
> > NOT seen any indications of present liquid water on the surface.
> ***{Yes we have. To suppose that the pattern of light absorption in
> water, plainly apparent in that photo taken in Reull Vallis, is due to
> flaws in the camera or to geology is simply absurd. To suppose that
> hydrothermal vents never occur, anywhere on Mars, at low elevations, is
> even more absurd. Such a supposition amounts to claiming a miracle has
> taken place, and as such is an extraordinary claim requiring
> extraordinary proof. Lakes on Mars are entirely to be expected, and the
> photographic evidence of their existence obtained by Mars Express is
> entirely unsurprising. --MJ}***
I have never stated that hydrothermal vents don't occur on Mars. On the
contrary, I said that it is quite possible and probable. I just haven't
seen any proof of any _active_ ones. And, there seems to be no
volcanism near Reull Vallis, at least in this part.
> > ) ...it is most
> > plausible that the surface coloring differences are real, but not
> > related to liquid water. Please take a look at the MOC NA and MEX
> > HRSC nadir images for the surface TEXTURE in the area in question,
> > and can you then talk about real proof of whatever is down there???
> ***{If you have a reference to something specific which you think
> supports your position, cite it, and I will take a look. --MJ}***
I did. Two links above to my previous writings, and several links to
naturally occuring coloured layers seen on Earth.
Jarmo
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Jarmo Korteniemi * http://www.student.oulu.fi/~jkorteni *
Planetology group, Astronomy, University of Oulu, Finland
s-posti / email: jarmo DOT#1 korteniemi AT oulu DOT#2 fi
puhelin / phone: +358 (45) 6362264
huone / room: TÄ215 (klo 12-20, ajoittain aiemminkin)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Jarmo Korteniemi
> >So it'a okay to reduce the effect of the green channel "cause it looks
> >like it should be adjusted", but not for the blue channel? Weird..
> You did read my other post about color calibration to say 9000 K did you?
> I dare say here that you just made pretty pictures!
> Feel offended if you like, but I classify those pictures as cheap PR coloring.
Not offended, but releaved. You got my point exactly. The ESA PR picture is
just a cheap PR coloring, in my opinion. It is not accurate, and leads to
false interpretations such as this lake.
The result is of no value, except for high resolution large scale geologic
interpretation, determining surface units, and _relative_ classification of
those surface units. Probably forgot something, but the main point is: not
the real colors you see there.
> >So.. if I give you an image of a brown surface, imaged with r, g, and b
> >, you will say (looking at the g image) that there are plants there,
> >because the green channel has some brightnes in it???
> Sorry, I did not say that, you do.
That was a question.
> >The jpeg (or whatever compression) blocks are not on the ground, thus
> >they are _artefacts_ created by the compression algorythm.
> It is motion related, and even for jpg to 'go green' in a pixel in this
> case requires a rather strong green component.
> This is known,. see the link to the discussion in sci.spacetech I posted
> in the other posting, about compression for the mars camera from NASA,
> and why wavelet encoding was mentioned, and actually used on mars.
Motion related? Err.. no. The image is fine, until processed and
compressed by the computer on MEX. And I can do nothing about the
compression, I am against it. But so am I against several things,
but they're still there.
> >> >well go ahead. It's stupid.
> >> Oops I did not know you did something evil like that ;-)
> >"Do not speak if you don't know what you are speaking about", said
> >someone wise somewhere..
> See that link, I was there before you even knew what it was.
> I think you still do not know what it was actually.
Actually I have no clue what your two last sentences were about, you're
right about that... :)
> >I do not know the algorythm. I only know what it does to images. Ask
> >the Germans who made the camera and the software.
> Exactly.
> The teams should get together and THEN make an image.
> Else it is worth very little.
> Errors like that is why acceleration sensors are mounted wrong way around,
> causing crashes, why engines switch off because of double activation of
> microswitches, why they use pounds and not kilograms... No oversight.
Unfortunately I am only in the scientific team, not in the technical team.
But I have to say that from what I've understood, their duties were filled
to the max. These calibration problems never occurred while using the cam
on planes, or in the testing phase of the space version. And they're coming
closer to the solution by the minute. I'm just saying that they haven't
done it to that image yet, it was almost a straight release from orbit #22
passing a year ago, and now we're at about orbit #1500.
> >> I'd personally go for true uncompressed....
> >Well, wouldn't we all.
> A bit of brains, and not just taking 2 undergraduate students do a new
> project, but a more in depth knowledge of the stuff, would have allowed you
> to use uncompressed anyways, at least as an option.
Again, don't talk about what you don't know about. If you want, we can start
another thread about image compression, where I can explain 1) why compression
has to be used and 2) how they've developed it further.
> >http://berlinadmin.dlr.de/Missions/express -> contact the technical team.
> No, why bother, you want fake PR images, you have them.
> Why not paint some elephants in it, sure will have a great press value.
Nice attitude.
> >> Dunno in this case, no contest.
> >How do you explain that, if the laser altimeter measures to the bottom of
> >the fluid, there is a ridge _exactly_ where the dark areas are? If it were
> >the water you propose, the darker areas should be the deepest water areas.
> >And, if the laser bouces off the lake surface, then it should be flat.
> >Kind of a weird dilemma, doncha think?
> >And, FYI, those central ridges in dry channels are a pretty common thing
> >in Martian outflow channels.
> I dunno, let's go there an see if we can catch some fish.
Again. I thought I was talking to an adult.
Jarmo Korteniemi
> ***{As I pointed out in an earlier post, you would have to be at a very
> precise position and angle, to ensure that the sun's reflection would be
> positioned on the lake. With Mar's express moving at many thousands of
> miles per hour, the window of opportunity would likely be a fraction of
> a second. Taking such a photo would take a lot of planning and effort,
> and would piss a lot of people off who would prefer to use the camera
> for other purposes. But if you think you can persuade ESA to do it, I
> say go for it. --MJ}***
Hmm.. I started thinking about this. Mars Express takes images at the
following angles along the flying path (see
http://solarsystem.dlr.de/Missions/express/kamera/aufnahmetechnik4eng.html
for a reference picture):
forward:
Stereo 1, 18.9 degrees
Red, 12.8 < x < 18.9 deg
photometry 1, 12.8 deg
blue, 0 < x < 12.8 deg
straight down:
nadir, 00.0 deg
backward:
green, 0 < x < -12.8 deg
photometry 2, -12.8 deg
near-IR, -12.8 < x < -18.9 deg
stereo 2, -18.9 deg
(I couldn't find the angles for the four color channels.. :-/ )
Additionally, all these CCDs image the surface 11.9 degrees
to the 'left' and 'right'. It wouldn't be too difficult to catch
the sun in one of those images, reflecting from either the
lake surface or one of the waves bound to occur on a liquid
surface. But nothing is seen...
Jarmo Korteniemi
> >> >night, that's gonna stand out like a sore, but very warm thumb in IR!
> >> What is this instrument called? 'Neutron spectrometer?' is there water
> >> in that area?
> >THEMIS onboard the Odyssey spacecraft and HRSC on Mars Express.
> Hey, HRSC is the camera! I would like to see data from the neutron
> spectrometer for that area (to see if thsre is water there).
Oops, sorry, thought you were talking about night-time IR images, taken
e.g. by THEMIS.
> >Looking forward to your followup on this issue.
> Look here, and be amazed!
> http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/pa/News/MarsOdyssey.html
> So, many places water (ice) is less then 1 meter below surface.
> Any geothermal heat would metl the ice.
> That vally is quite deep, and no reason i see why then water should not flow
> in.
> We need to position in a bigger map, dunno yet where to find this data for
> this valley.
Reull Vallis is at 41 deg South and 101 deg East.
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEM1EQWDE2E_0.html
http://www.dlr.de/mars-express/images/reull_vallis/
Down at the bottom of the latter (german version) you can see a globe.
http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/pa/News/cover_epi.jpg
http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/pa/News/cover_therms.jpg
In these images Reull is in the left-bottom region.
Jarmo Korteniemi
> ***{That reminds me of one of the points I keep wanting to make, but
> somehow never think of when actually working on a post. :-( I keep
> labeling the crack in the bottom of the alleged lake as "an enormous
> hydrothermal vent." Well, in addition to the color pattern indicating
Crack?? If you mean the left-to-right dark area, it is, unfortunately,
higher than the surroundings.
> water, and the need for geothermal heat to keep the water from freezing,
> there is another reason for concluding that that's a hydrothermal vent:
> if it were not, it would be full of sand! Where are the dune fields, if
> that's not a lake? Sand would have been continually settling into that
Sorry to say, Mars is not covered by dune fields. It is quite typical
desert, in general. And desert, in general, has only occasional dunes.
> ***{If it were close up IR, it would indeed. But do they do IR on close
> passes? If they do, I haven't seen any. Remember: Mars Express was a
> mere 273 km above Reull Vallis when that picture was taken. Did they do
> an IR image at that time? If so, please tell me where to find it.
> --MJ}***
IR. Close passes. Hmm.. lemme think... Try THEMIS. Try HRSC. Both do IR.
Close-by. THEMIS does it on the night-side as well as on the day-side.
The IR bands used by THEMIS are centered at: 6.78 microns, 6.78 microns,
7.93 microns, 8.56 microns, 9.35 microns,10.21 microns, 11.04 microns,
11.79 microns, 12.57 microns and 14.88 microns. HRSC IR wavelength is
qround 950 plusminus 50 nm (don't remember the exact number).
HRSC images:
http://www.rssd.esa.int/index.php?project=PSA
(click on the "access the archive" at top-left.. then start the browser,
and go to mars express, hrsc instrument, and choose orbit 22, and load to
basket. you'll have to register to get the ftp site address.)
Jarmo Korteniemi
> The probative value of the Reull Vallis photo stems from (a)
[snip]
> (c) the brightly colored mineral deposits around the margins of the
> lake,
Please, could you show these to me? I've somehow managed to bypass
this bit of info/proof.. :)
> (d) the blurry spot that suggests the presence of a plume of warm,
> rising water. Note, however, that while I have been assuming that the
> depth below datum at that location is sufficient to support the
> existence of liquid water, I don't know that for a fact. And note also
> that I have been assuming a connection to some plausible underground
> heat source, despite the fact that I don't really know that either, in
> this case.
The depth of Reull Vallis at that spot is at maximum -2.5 km below MPR
(mean planetary radius).
Jarmo Korteniemi
Okay. Firstly, where can I get my hands on this NASA Activities
(Dec. 1980, vol. 11, number 12)?
Secondly, if this is the only source of information, I would point
to a few things:
It seems like a color scan of a grayscale image. This would explain
the red dot: it's either a circle drawn by somebody, or a mistake
made by the scanner, or something like that. But it isn't a piece of
the original image. Secondly, I would like to have the resolution
and the location of the image - putting things into perspective helps
always. Thirdly, I find it weird that the second image, apparently
taken 4.5 secs later than the first one(?), is illuminated differently.
The second image is MUCH brighter in the surface details close to the
alledged geyser plume. This might be a result of post-processing,
but knowing the capabilities of 1980 image processing tools, I doubt it.
Finally, I do not see any difference (besides the brightness) between
the two images, besides the locations of the small white dots, which
are artifacts, I presume?
To conclude, this could be anything of the following:
dust devil
dust storm
geyser
meteor impact
blast-off dust cloud of a Martian attack squadron bound for Uranus.
:-)
The location and resolution info, plus the article, would help.
Bob Harrington
~Gotta~ start trimming this a bit...
Mitchell Jones wrote:
>> Both Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Express are in polar orbits, and
>> are capable of pointing their cameras off nadir.
>
> ***{Undoubtedly so, but they need to do it. And I don't know if they
> would be able to see the thing if they were at the correct location
> and angle when they took their picture, given the low elevation.
> Remember: it is only in the middle of the summer that the sun comes
> within 16 degrees of that location. The angle is larger at other
> times, varying from 16 degrees in the middle of the summer to 66
> degrees in the middle of the winter. --MJ}***
(...)
> ***{Nor have I, but I haven't seen any pointing the other way, either.
> Anyway, as I have already said, it doesn't matter: a straight down
> photo can't show a reflected image on that lake. While they could
> attempt an angle shot, timed to the precise moment when the spot
> would be on the lake, it would take a lot of time and trouble, and
> would piss off a lot of people who have projects of their own that
> require the use of that camera. Bottom line: even if such a mode of
> verification is feasible--which is not clear--it isn't likely to
> happen. I contend, however, that the case is clear on other grounds.
> --MJ}***
Jarmo has already provided a much better description of the imaging
capabilities than I ever could; that, and the cPROTO techniques used by
the MGS team to get super high resolution images of very small targets
on Mars by preprogramming the orbiter to slowly rotate as it images to
counter the orbital motion show that the folks running these programs
are more than capable of such a task.
(cPROTO - http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/09/27/)
Doing so to catch specular reflections from suspected standing water
would seem to me to be about as high a priority and definitive a proof
as the mission could have. Your hypothetical low pressure nonreflecting
water notwithstanding (and for which there has not yet been provided any
evidence, theoretical or otherwise) - the lack of imagery of specular
reflections to date in ~any~ imagery is pretty damning.
And not finding it because "they don't want to find it" just isn't gonna
cut it, I'm afraid...
> Others here have shown that just ~having~ free
>> standing liquid water at 10 mb is rather a challenge.
>
> ***{No one has shown any such thing in this thread, or even attempted
> to do so. I went into that issue in great depth, and demonstrated
> that it is *not* a challenge--that at 5 km below datum liquid water
> could exist up to roughly 12 degrees C. Moreover, though I didn't go
> into that specifically, hydrothermal vent water is typically very
> heavy with dissolved minerals, which act like antifreeze, and depress
> the freezing point. Thus the range at which water could be liquid
> under these conditions is likely 20 degrees C or more. (It could be a
> *lot* more, if the right stuff is dissolved in the water.) If you
> disagree with any of this, feel free to give your reasons. --MJ}***
Thought it had been offered back up the thread a ways, I am not
sufficiently educated in the subject to comment usefully; if I am wrong,
then my apologies.
> ***{That reminds me of one of the points I keep wanting to make, but
> somehow never think of when actually working on a post. :-( I keep
> labeling the crack in the bottom of the alleged lake as "an enormous
> hydrothermal vent." Well, in addition to the color pattern indicating
> water, and the need for geothermal heat to keep the water from
> freezing, there is another reason for concluding that that's a
> hydrothermal vent: if it were not, it would be full of sand! Where
> are the dune fields, if that's not a lake? Sand would have been
> continually settling into that crack for a billion years. Why hasn't
> it filled the thing up by now? Hell, even if it was a lake, that
> crack would have long since filled with debris--unless it it is
> hydrothermal vent! You can't say wind would clean the sand out: it's
> down in a hole. Sand would fall in, but it wouldn't fall out! But a
> plug in a hydrothermal vent causes a heat buildup. Eventually the
> water flashes to steam, and blows the plug out of the pipe. --MJ}***
Jarmo's previously linked higher resolution images of the same region
seemed to show exactly sand dunes (and a few small craters) on the
valley floor...?
>> That sounds awfully cynical...
>
> ***{I guess it does, but I was paying attention to those events when
> they were taking place, and that's an accurate description of what
> happened. Believe me, I saw it as a riddle at the time, because I
> would have thought they would have *wanted* excitement. It was only
> years later that I came to understand the political realities which
> they face. That reality, to repeat, is this: space exploration may
> objectively be one of the most important things for the human race to
> do, to ensure its long term survival, but a majority of the voters in
> a democracy do not, and will not, comprehend that. That state of
> affairs limits NASA's budget to a certain size relative to everything
> else, and if they opportunistically go for more when there is
> momentary excitement in the press, they may get it, but they will pay
> a heavy price later, when the excitement dies down and the groups
> from whom they extracted the money go after them. NASA's culture has
> been shaped by that. It has made them into the group of
> unimaginative, ultracautious, hidebound, thoroughgoing wet blankets
> that they unarguably are. But don't get me wrong: I am not arguing
> for abolishing NASA, because in the current environment, that would
> just mean the money would go to winos, retards, drug addicts,
> "teachers," geezers, and other parasites. As long as taxpayer money
> is going to be doled out in the thoroughly immoral way that is
> accepted current practice, I would rather it go to agencies like
> NASA. But their internal culture is thoroughly corrupt, and something
> needs to be done about it. --MJ}***
But to suggest NASA is spending hundreds of nillions of dollars to send
multiple probes to Mars, all the while planning in advance to carefully
prune any real - but "unwanted" - results, I fear requires that this
thread be moved to one of the alt.conspiracy groups. I have no
intention of following it there...
>> So, here's another chance to prove your hypothesis: Both current
>> Mars orbiters have infrared imaging capabilities allowing them to
>> "see" the night side of the planet. A post or two up you were
>> giving us a -10 to +12 degrees Celsius value for the lake water; on
>> a typical cold Martian night, that's gonna stand out like a sore,
>> but very warm thumb in IR!
>
> ***{If it were close up IR, it would indeed. But do they do IR on
> close passes? If they do, I haven't seen any. Remember: Mars Express
> was a mere 273 km above Reull Vallis when that picture was taken. Did
> they do an IR image at that time? If so, please tell me where to find
> it. --MJ}***
Your hundred plus kilometer warm lake isn't going to be hard to miss
even in wide angle imagers from that altitude.
>> Then we will run out of DVDs and potato chips and resort to sending
>> each other to the cornfield out of sheer boredom... Note that
>> Hollywood is ~already~ pretty much out of original ideas for films;
>> in far less than a few billion years, racial suicide will be
>> infinitely preferable to "Ishtar 271: A New Beginning"...
>
> ***{I'll admit to being completely baffled by the above. There are
> over 200 billion galaxies in the portion of the universe presently
> accessible to our telescopes, and likely many times that number that
> are still out of range. And there are 200 billion sunlike stars in
> the Milky Way galaxy alone, with the vast majority of them likely to
> have planets. What could ever become boring about exploring that
> universe? I literally cannot imagine a life more wonderful than the
> life the future holds for us, if we can free ourselves from the
> parasites who want to enslave us, and begin to move out into infinite
> space. --MJ}***
It's called "humor", boy! ;^) I never guaranteed it would be good...
And I ain't goin' nowhere without my potato chips!
>>>> In the meanwhile, I support enthusiastic but logical expansion of
>>>> our exploration of the solar system and beyond. NASA and ESA are
>>>> already providing some spectacular results from Mars and Saturn,
>>>> and via the Great Observatories, glimpses of the wonders beyond.
>
> ***{That's right. Forget the DVD's, potato chips, and cornfields.
> Let's go out there and begin to experience the wonders for ourselves.
> To do that, of course, we will somehow have to scrape the leeches off
> of our backs, but hey, where there's a will, there's a way! :-)
> --MJ}***
You sure there aren't any leeches in that geothermal lake, just smackin'
their lips as they wait for us? ;^)
Bob ^,,^
Bob Harrington
The images in your link appear to have been scanned from printed
originals such as those in a magazine or newspaper, the red marking
looks like a printing artifact, a bit of dust or paper grit that gets
between the printing plate and the paper causing exactly such an
artifact. Carefully look through different printed materials and you
will find many similar examples. Note also that it is not visible in
the second image from 4.5 seconds later - that's fast cooling lava!
The "geyser" looks exactly like images of Martian dust devils that have
been photographed from Mars orbiters many times since.
The "Face on Cydonia" conspiracy angle just elicits a sad shake of the
head...
Mitchell Jones
Jarmo Korteniemi <aa....@see.dee.ee> wrote:
> In alt.sci.planetary
> <mjones-E0C064....@spectator.sj.sys.us.xo.net> stated that:
> > ***{You didn't use the expression "false color," but the entire focus of
> > your presentation was on the camera, with the point being that we
> > couldn't trust the colors we were seeing on the image, and thus could
> > not infer liquid water from the patterns that were present. For example,
> > you said: " it is NOT as blue in real life as shown in the PR image."
> > The entire thrust of your attempt to explain away the implications of
> > that color pattern--the pattern of light absorption in water--was that
> > the pattern in question was an artifact of the image processing and
> > would not have been seen by a human eye if one had been riding along
> > with Mars Express when the picture was taken. --MJ}***
> > I was talking about color-topography dependancy,
> > > and whether it has anything to do with your hypotheses about a lake.
***{Your newsreader seems to be malfunctioning. The blank line following
my comment, above, has somehow been deleted, causing the following text
to be pushed right up against it. That's not helpful, where readability
is concerned. --MJ}***
> > ***{So now you are saying that the colors shown in the photo are true
> > and accurate, but there is no water in the alleged lake? In other words,
> > the colors on the photo result from random geological processes, rather
> > than from flawed color processing in the camera?
>
> No, I am not saying that the colors are correct. I was merely
> talking about a different matter; talking about the topography
> dependance of color. I was saying that coloring does not have to
> follow, or _not_ follow topography. Both instances are widely
> known. For example, in the deserts of Utah/Arizona you have hills of
> redder color, superposed on a brighter (yellowish) desert floor.
> And vice versa. Sedimentary deposition, cased by a variety of
> processes, results in different coloured deposits on top of each
> each others. Also known as layering. Several links down below.
>
> And, if you go to a place where you have a dike of darker color
> material in the brighter bedrock, and erode this region to be flat,
> you get a flat surface with color differences. The erosion can, again
> be done by several processes, for example weathering, glaciation, etc.
>
> Geology 101, shouldn't be that hard to understand.
***{Nothing in the above is hard to understand. Most importantly, not a
word of it bears on the issue at all. Nobody has alleged that rock
layers are always uniform in color. But you cannot show me any geology,
anywhere on earth, that mimics the pattern of light absorption in water,
because there isn't any. Show me a place, anywhere on Earth, where a
deep deposit of black rock is overlayed by a deep deposit of blue rock,
which in turn is overlayed by a deep deposit of bluegreen rock, which in
turn is overlayed by a deep deposit of yellow-blue-green rock, then by a
deposit of predominently yellow rock, then by a deposit of bright yellow
rock, in the manner of the Reull Vallis photo. You can't do it, because
no such deposits exist. --MJ}***
> Damn. To be clear, let me draw you a map of my statement:
>
> <map>
***{Nothing came through but what you see above. --MJ}***
> The colors in the PR image are not accurate. The colors show differences in
> the surface properties, yes: There are areas which reflect more blue light
> than other areas, and some that reflect red light less, etc etc. The HRSC
> raw images show those variations, yes. BUT, simply combining those images
> does not produce the real-life colors one's eyes could see on the ground
> from MEX orbit. In other words, there are differences on the ground,
> observable differences. Those differences are imaged and recorded by MEX
> HRSC. Those differences are seen in the images of that instrument. But
> you will not be able to make a real-color image from those images, not
> yet, because no calibration has been achieved. No-one can, except by
> accident, and not knowing it. :)
***{No camera is perfect--and no human eyes are perfect, for that
matter. But so what? The ESA presumably purchased the best camera they
could get for the money at the time, calibrated it as best they could,
and sent it to Mars. That it is imperfect goes without saying. But that
fact does not give you a blank check. It doesn't mean you can get away
with dismissing any photographic evidence you don't like by merely
noting that the camera is imperfect and the calibration is imperfect.
There is no reason to believe that the camera is worthless, unless you
claim that ESA is run by a bunch of buffoons. Absent that, the images
are going to be close to the truth, even if less than perfect, and you
are going to have to face up to the implications of what we see on those
images. --MJ}***
> Additionally, the differences appear to follow topography, as seen in the
> image I provided you with (link to my message down below).
***{Of course it follows topography: the deeper the light penetrates
into the lake, the more of the long wavelengths are absorbed, and the
more the blue end of the spectrum predominates. --MJ}***
But the darkest
> region seems to follow the high elevation, not a flat surface nor a
> depression. It follows a central ridge on the Reull Vallis canyon.
***{That's just a shadow running along a ridgeline, if I take your
meaning. I'm not talking about that area of the photo at all. How many
times do I have to repeat that the black I'm talking about is edged by
dark blue, which fades into bluegreen, etc? --MJ}***
> </map>
>
> Link to two of my previous messages which you apparently ignored
***{Never saw them, if you are referring to the text at that link, where
you said, among other things, that "maybe you can now admit that
maybe there ain't a lake there, if you are man enough."
Those sorts of non-substantive, ad hominem remarks--and you have made
several of them so far--have no place in a reasoned discussion. They are
a breach of discussion group etiquette--bad manners--but they do nothing
to convince me or anyone else of the rightness of your opinions. Quite
the contrary: they provoke reasonable readers to wonder why you would
make provocative remarks of that sort, if you thought you could win on
the merits.
In any case, I am reading this thread in sci.physics, not on Google, and
I see only posts that appear in sci.physics. (I turned to Google briefly
several days ago because my newsgroup server was acting up, but that
problem has been rectified, and I haven't paid much attention to Google
since that time.)
--Mitchell Jones}***
> Raw images from the MEX HRSC showing the false coloration effects and the
> compression effects in the region
***{I waded through all of that stuff. It reminded me of a sensory
psychology course I took years ago, which went into great detail about
how visual processing was done in the brain, based on experiments
conducted on neurons in the visual system taken from various levels,
from the retina down through various layers of specialized cells in the
visual cortex. Not surprisingly, looking at the various component images
didn't tell you much about what the final product was going to look
like, but when they were all assembled together, presto, you saw a cow,
or whatever. And the professor in that course was a bright guy who
enjoyed a good argument with a student, and he and I argued a lot, and I
still got an A in his course. However, I shudder to think how he would
have reacted if, when he showed us that the final assembled image was a
picture of a cow, I had said: "Nope. That can't be right," and, when he
asked me why not, I had said, "None of the component images show a
cow, so the final image can't be a cow, either." If I had dared to come
out with something that bizarre, I suspect he would have tossed me out
of the class. And yet, so far as I can see, that is the essential thrust
of what you are saying when you cite the component images at the above
link--to wit: since the component images are wildly different from the
final product, we must distrust what we see when we look at the final
product. My response: surely you jest. --MJ}***
, plus a MGS MOLA topography showing that
> the dark regions are mostly higher in elevation than the surroundings
***{No. First, as already noted, the shadow on the ridgeline is
irrelevant. That's not the area of interest. Second, the color photo was
taken straight down; hence the camera could see deep down into the crack
at the bottom of the lake. The topographic image, on the other hand, is
an angle shot that cannot see down into the crack. You can verify that
fact easily enough, by simply comparing it to the color photo. Note, for
example, the triangular peak near the lower right part of the color
photo. Note that all three sides of its roughly triangular pyramid form
are visible. Now look at the MOLA (Mars Orbiting Laser Altimeter) image
of that peak. Note that you can only see the two sides of the peak that
would be visible along a line of sight angled down and toward the north.
The third, north facing side of the peak is obscured by the other two
sides, and thus cannot be seen. Now look at the various other peaks on
the topo image. You will quickly note that they show the effects of
being viewed from an angle as well. That explains why there is no line
of red along the southern shore of the lake in the topographical image:
it can't be seen due to the obscuring effects of higher elevations
further south. And that's also why the deep levels within the
hydrothermal vent can't be seen: they are obscured by the higher
elevations along the south side of the crack.
I do, however, thank you for supplying that image, because it settles
the question of whether the lake is far below the mean surface of Mars,
as it must be if pressures are to be high enough to support a lake of
liquid water. And they are: the edge of the lake, according to the color
scale on the topo image, is more than two kilometers below datum! That
gives a pressure reading of
P = (1132.18)(2.718)^-(.04324)(3.698)(2127)/(8.314)(200), or
P = 923 Pa, or 9.23 mb, or 6.92 mmHg.
Looking at my vapor pressure tables, that allows pure water to remain
liquid up to about 5 degrees C, and allows heavily mineralized solutions
a range from very roughly -10 degrees C to around +8 degrees C.
Bottom line: witches will ride brooms before that's anything other than
a lake on Mars. :-)
--Mitchell Jones}***
:
> http://groups.google.fi/groups?hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-U
> S:official&selm=d2jp0f%24ejc%241%40news.oulu.fi
>
> Images from the surface, MGS MOC NA close-ups, with no apparent
> indications of liquid substances:
> http://groups.google.fi/groups?hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-U
> S:official&selm=d2htvv%2411k%241%40news.oulu.fi
***{I'm almost at a loss for words here. We have a new, high res color
photo from Mars Express which clearly shows a lake in Reull Vallis.
Nobody ever claimed that the old, lower res, black and white photos from
Mars Global Surveyor showed much of anything in that area. It is the new
information, and the implications of that new information, that we have
been discussing. Surely you aren't going to demand that we toss out the
new, better photo, because it shows more than the old, inferior photo?
Horribly, I believe that's exactly what you are saying. --MJ}***
> If the links do not work (the address seem odd to me :) just say so and
> I'll repost them here now.
>
>
> > OK, then we have two hypotheses.
> > Hypothesis #1: It's not a lake. However, a series of independent
> > geological processes taking place over hundreds of millions of years
> > produced rock layering in the area of the supposed "lake" such that the
> > color is (a) a dimmer version of the yellow coloration outside the
> > "lake," in its shallow areas; (b) a still dimmer shade of yellow tinged
> > with bluegreen slightly further down; (c) a bluegreen without yellow in
> > layers even further down; (d) a blue without green in levels that are
> > deeper still; and (e) black in the deepest levels.
>
> Just one main geological process will suffice: a big flood, or several.
> Something has carved Reull, the easiest explanation is water. Lots of it.
> You see the flow marks on the floor (MOC NA links above)? Now, as this water
> flowed, it probably both eroded the surface and transported materials
> downslope. The dark deposits may be salts or silts or muds in that flowing
> water, maybe deposited at the later /latest stages of the flow - and/or -
> deposits left behind by the drying stages of that flood: the drying lakes
> with salt-saturated water. Take your pick.
***{That doesn't explain the color pattern on the bottom, and it doesn't
explain why the bottom hasn't filled up with debris in the hundreds of
millions of years since the last "catastrophic flood" would have been
likely to occur.
And it doesn't explain another very interesting fact. Looking at the
topo map, I see that the surface level of the lake would be at about
-2043 meters. Now, do you remember that, based on the assumption that
the colors reflected light absorption in water, I calculated the depth
of the lake where the blue transitioned into black? Do you remember
that, based on that calculation, I came up with a depth of 482 meters?
Well, if we add -482 meters to -2043 meters, we come up with -2525
meters. And, oddly, the lowest point in the lake registered by the Mars
Orbiting Laser Altimeter was -2550 meters, measured in the only location
in the lake bottom where the north-south dimension of the hydrothermal
vent is wide enough to be probed by the laser.
Of course, that's only odd if it isn't a lake! Whereas if it *is* a
lake, then it isn't odd at all, now is it?
It would seem that my theory made a testable prediction, and that
prediction proved to be true, now didn't it? :-)
--Mitchell Jones}***
> > Hypothesis #2: It's a lake.
> > Which hypothesis is the simplest explanation of the facts?
>
> Read above.
***{Indeed. :-) --MJ}***
> > ***{No it isn't. The reality is that you ignored my response to your
> > first message, until now. I have no problem at all in accepting this new
> > interpretation of your position. Nothing changes at all, regardless of
> > whether you say the lake doesn't exist and the color pattern comes from
> > flaws in the camera, or that the lake doesn't exist and the color
> > pattern comes from geology. Either way, the alternative hypothesis--that
> > it's a lake--is the simplest explanation of the facts. --MJ}***
>
> Sorry about ignoring you. This thread is growing so fast. I've been
> preoccupied with Jan's messages.
>
> It is far easier to explain the formations by other means than by a
> lake. This is because of the topography, and the morphology of the
> surface. You have not commented on either. Please do so. Links above.
***{Comments above. --MJ}***
> > ***{It is obviously *possible* that geology could produce the observed
> > pattern. There could be a layer of black minerals, with a layer of blue
> > minerals on top of it, and a layer of bluegreen minerals on top of that,
> > and yellow-blue-green minerals over that, etc., so that as the area
> > weathered over the millennia, the resulting pattern would match the
> > pattern of light absorption in water. However, any sort of brightly
> > colored layer is rare, geologically speaking. Most rock layers consist
> > of mixed material and exhibit the dull colors that we refer to as "earth
> > tones." Hence the likelihood of a series of such layers is itself very
> > low, regardless of the sequence of the colors, and the idea that such a
> > sequence might match the pattern of light absorption in water is simply
> > absurd. If you claim otherwise, I challenge you to cite a single
> > instance. Find me a field geologist who has ever seen such a formation,
> > anywhere on earth, in any mine shaft, on any cliff face--anywhere at
> > all. The fact of the matter is that you can't do it, because it has
> > never happened. --MJ}***
>
> Here is what a quick search with google resulted in, from the net. Layering
> in almost all its glory.
>
> http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jjk29/Painted%20Desert/pd%20tire%20tracks.jpg
***{That's not a black layer, with a blue layer above it, and a
bluegreen layer above that, and a yellow-blue-green layer above it, etc.
Simply put: it doesn't mimic the pattern of light absorption in water.
Strike one. --MJ}***
> http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jjk29/
***{Huh? Strike two. --MJ}***
> http://www.amwest-travel.com/awt_painted.html
***{Strike three. --MJ}***
> http://www.arizona-leisure.com/painted-desert.html
***{Strike four. --MJ}***
> Firstly, images of a desert in Arizona. The first surface is covered by tons
> of dark rocks, removed (pushed downwards?) by the tire tracks and revealing
> the underlying brighter sand.
***{So it is. But it doesn't mimic the pattern of light absorption in
water. --MJ}***
>
> http://www.seakayak.ws/photocat.nsf/webphotos/F5F8CF7E6C81E2E285256B9B006967F7
> /$file/baja02-10.jpg
***{Strike five. --MJ}***
> More layers, this time at sea-shore.
>
> http://www.gesource.ac.uk/satellite/149.jpg
>
> Do you see the different colouring at the river delta?
***{Earth has a blue sky that reflects, making even shallow water show
blue; and Earth has algae that often turn shallow water green. Such
phenomena merely obscure the pattern of light absorption in water. But
Mars doesn't have a blue sky or algae in the water. Result: there is
nothing to obscure the pattern of light absorption, and, thus, on Mars
that pattern can be used to calculate depth. --MJ}***
> http://my.erinet.com/~jwoolf/geocol2.jpg
> And layering.
***{But, again, not the kind of example you need to supply. Strike six.
--MJ}***
> Remember, the Reull Vallis image is a false-color image. Not real-life.
> Exaggerated.
***{It was good enough to calculate the depth of the lake. --MJ}***
> Continuing the explanation I have for the darker deposits there:
> The gradual change between the dark deposits and the surrounding brighter
> material is due to either of two possibilities: Bright material is
> superposing the darker underlying unit, or the dark deposits are
> superposing the brighter unit. Whichever is the case, the overlying
> layer is gradually superposing the underlying unit.
***{The assumption that it's a lake enables us to predict the color
pattern. The color pattern enables us to predict the depth. And
independent measurements confirm that prediction. Result: you are toast,
and the case is closed. That's a lake. --MJ}***
> > However, if you include the third option, that it is
> > > colouring due to some other effect than wither a flaw in the camera,
> > > or a lake, is in my opinion the best one.
> > ***{The third option, as already noted, is geology. The observed pattern
> > is either due to accidental errors in the color processing, or to the
> > happenstances of geology, or it is due to the selective absorption of
> > light during passage through water. Of those three possibilities, only
> > the last is within the realm of reason.
> > Here is why:
> > (1) We know Mars has a molten core, and that the Tharsis volcanos have
> > been active in recent geological time. There are, for example, lava
> > flows on Mt. Olympus that show no cratering, implying eruptions that
> > occurred essentially yesterday, as time is measured by geologists.
>
> Yes. We also do know, that there are no observed vents near Reull Vallis.
> Or I know that, at least.
***{There is a hydrothermal vent plain as day running along the bottom
of the lake. --MJ}***
> > (2) We know that Mars once had enormous oceans. The west flank of
> > Olympus, for example, shows towering cliffs that were obviously carved
> > by wave action. There are other areas where surface ice shows cracking
> > that matches the patterns of pack ice on Earth, and indicates drifting
> > icebergs and a sea of liquid water below--which means: there is a
> > geothermal heat source under that sea, which keeps it from freezing.
>
> Oceans are a possibility, but lets not get into that. Massive amounts of
> water in the past is for sure. I am not convinced about that pack-ice, but
> they've built up quite a strong case.
***{My point is that there is plenty of water to feed hydrothermal
vents. I take it that you agree. --MJ}***
> > (3) We know that Martian surface pressure, in low lying areas, is
> > sufficient to support the existence of liquid water, if that water is
> > heated geothermally.
>
> Hmm... basically, yes.
>
> > What this all means is simple: there are going to be hydrothermal vents
> > on Mars, and some of them will be in low lying areas. Result: there will
> > be pools of liquid water at those locations. To suppose otherwise would
> > be to suppose a miracle.
>
> The only problem you have is to show the existence of geothermal vents in
> the area.
***{It's there in the photo, plain as the nose on your face. --MJ}***
Oh, and the existence of the lake, from surface images - not
> false-color interpretation.
***{If we assume its a lake, we can predict the color pattern; and from
the color pattern, the depth follows; and that prediction has been
confirmed to be correct, based on data that you yourself supplied.
Therefore, to repeat, witches will ride brooms before that's anything
other than a lake in Reull Vallis. --MJ}***
> Why can't you (MJ and Jan) discuss this thing like normal people, and
> not like some fanatic religious people? You all the time seem to shout:
> "believe! there is no other possibility than the lake- repent, you are
> wrong!". You seem to be too intellegent to do that.
***{That's just more irrelevant ad hominem stuff. This isn't about me. I
will say, however, that your implied belief that only a religious zealot
is ever sure of anything, and that scientists can never be, is
thoroughly wrong. Sometimes the evidence is strong enough to settle an
issue. That's the case here, in spades. That's a lake on Mars. Period.
End of story. --MJ}***
> If you indeed can build a case on behalf of the lake, I'm all for it,
> that would be cool. But if you ignore facts which I give you (topo and
> surface images) and keep going on about "the colors, the colors!", then
> your idea can easily be proven wrong. Even though you dismiss everything
> as being absurd. That just ain't gonna cut it.
***{Your topo map is greatly appreciated. It confirmed the calculations
I did earlier, and made the case even stronger than it was before, if
that is possible. --MJ}***
> > > And my explanation is this:
> > > we see lots of surface colouring differences on Mars, often related
> > > to some other surface textures or morphologies. We have, however,
> > > NOT seen any indications of present liquid water on the surface.
> > ***{Yes we have. To suppose that the pattern of light absorption in
> > water, plainly apparent in that photo taken in Reull Vallis, is due to
> > flaws in the camera or to geology is simply absurd. To suppose that
> > hydrothermal vents never occur, anywhere on Mars, at low elevations, is
> > even more absurd. Such a supposition amounts to claiming a miracle has
> > taken place, and as such is an extraordinary claim requiring
> > extraordinary proof. Lakes on Mars are entirely to be expected, and the
> > photographic evidence of their existence obtained by Mars Express is
> > entirely unsurprising. --MJ}***
>
> I have never stated that hydrothermal vents don't occur on Mars. On the
> contrary, I said that it is quite possible and probable. I just haven't
> seen any proof of any _active_ ones. And, there seems to be no
> volcanism near Reull Vallis, at least in this part.
***{I don't know about volcanism, but the existence of the lake--which
is proven--requires a geothermal heat source. Otherwise the water would
freeze. --MJ}***
> > > ) ...it is most
> > > plausible that the surface coloring differences are real, but not
> > > related to liquid water. Please take a look at the MOC NA and MEX
> > > HRSC nadir images for the surface TEXTURE in the area in question,
> > > and can you then talk about real proof of whatever is down there???
> > ***{If you have a reference to something specific which you think
> > supports your position, cite it, and I will take a look. --MJ}***
>
> I did. Two links above to my previous writings, and several links to
> naturally occuring coloured layers seen on Earth.
***{You supplied a pile of examples of geological layering that did
*not* mimic the pattern of light absorption in water, but not a single
one that did. I said you couldn't do it, and you didn't. Thus that
material supports my position, not yours. --MJ}***
Vendicar Decarian
> On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Apr 2005 21:31:01 -0500) it happened "Vendicar
> Decarian" <V...@Pyro.net> wrote in
<Ckn3e.10171$If1.2...@read2.cgocable.net>:
> >rapidly in the green provides the same effect.
"Jan Panteltje" <pNaonSt...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1112446109.d0cf43912d08ac712e7d40d46d8efe5c@teranews...
> No
Higher sensitivity to green produces excess green in an image.
Your denial makes me laugh.
Vendicar Decarian
> Decarian" <V...@Pyro.net> wrote in
<5nn3e.10172$If1.2...@read2.cgocable.net>:
> >How about dust?
> >
> >Does that flow in too?
"Jan Panteltje" <pNaonSt...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1112443062.a31b1474765bf804f65a5b081146ee09@teranews...
> If top surface is wet an frozen, no.
So if the top surface of a pond is wet, dust in the wind will not flow into
the pond?
Other than mind altering drugs, what would prevent dust from fowling a pond
Jan?
"Jan Panteltje" <pNaonSt...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1112443062.a31b1474765bf804f65a5b081146ee09@teranews...
> Locally a place may melt, and from there the water then flows in.
The surface temperature is too cold Jan, and the surface pressure too low.
And even if it did melt, the pond would be full of dust, indeed, it would be
filled in.
"Jan Panteltje" <pNaonSt...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1112443062.a31b1474765bf804f65a5b081146ee09@teranews...
> This has been proposed by NASA IIRC.
What has been Proposed Jan? You proposed nothing.
Vendicar Decarian
> Hey I found the geyser and the red dot!
>
> http://www.planetarymysteries.com/mars/DiPJPL.html
>
> These are 2 pics, taken 4.5 seconds after each other.
> Note the red circle in the top one?
> Enlarge it. Did somebody draw a cirlce with a red pecil?
> Or is it hot magma, and a steam cloud originates from there?
Why doesn't the red circle appear in the second picture just 4.5 seconds
later?
Did the Martians cover it up?