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Latest Mars Photos Show Frosty Landscapes, Ancient Lakebeds
Phoghat writes "A new batch of images has been released by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissaince Orbiter and as usual they are stunning. In the first image, there is a lot going on! Numerous dust devil tracks have left criss cross marks. The second is an image of what could have been a once habitable lake. There are more, including a possible future landing site."
Why does /. never link to the original source?
http://www.uahirise.org/
Would this be the same NASA that just recently announced discovering arsenic based life?
The same NASA that desperately needs funding, and must fight to survive in a publish or die world?
Sorry for not taking everything NASA Mk II publishes at face value. Especially not when heavily photoshopped pictures are accompanied by weasel words like "could" and "potentially", but without a single theory.
I don't think theres any likely discovery that will get us moving.
Instead whats going to get us moving is getting it to the point that its cheaper. Hopefully with the albatross of the shuttle no longer around NASA's neck we'll create an infrastructure that makes it (relatively) easy to go anywhere in the solar system. Cheap transport to orbit, orbiting fuel depots and built-in-space spaceships that never enter the Earth's atmosphere -- sustainable exploration. Hopefully the administrations proposed NASA budget will get us to that point, even after congress got done with it. Only external geopolitics will up the NASA budget above $20B (in 2010 dollars) again, so if its going to happen in the mid-term future without hoping for a cold war, it has to be done this way.
"Amazingly photoshopped, with more kohl and false colours than a Soho gal. I don't know about others, but I am more impressed when pictures haven't been exaggerated"
The use of color to indicate variances in terrain elevation is common.
The use of false color to indicate areas of differing surface chemistry and elements is common in remote imaging.
To equate either with Photoshopped imagery is to betray a level of ignorance that one should well be embarrassed to display in public.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
1) These images are not photoshopped (at least not the ones on uahirise.org). If you knew anything about remote sensing, CCD sensors, image processing, or science, you'd know that.
http://www.uahirise.org/pdf/color-products.pdf [uahirise.org]
Have you actually read that PDF?
(My emphasis)
"PSP_005000_1000_RGB.NOMAP.JP2 3-color image consisting of RED, BG, and synthetic blue images. The BG image has been warped to line up with the RED.NOMAP image. The BG (blue-green) bandpass primarily accepts green light. The synthetic blue image digital numbers (DNs) consist of the BG image DN multiplied by 2 minus 30% of the RED image DN for each pixel. This is not unique data, but provides a more
appealing way to display the color variations present in just two bandpasses, RED and BG."
"For the Extras products, each color band is individually stretched to maximize contrast, so the colors are enhanced differently for each image based on the color and brightness of each scene. Scenes with dark shadows and bright sunlit slopes or with both bright and dark materials are stretched less, so the colors are less enhanced than is the case over bland scenes."
Whether one uses Photoshop or other software to enhance images to become more pleasing or effectful, it's generally called photoshopping.
Mars may look rather dull compared to Earth, and there's not much light there. But I'd much rather see things as they are, and the IR imagery displayed separately (preferably as black/white, as is traditional as it doesn't give any false impressions that it's visible light). That would be much more impressing than artificial colour "enhancements" and contrast stretching individual colour bands to make the images appear more colourful.
In many ways, exaggerating space images that are already impressive because they are from space to make more of an impact on the public isn't much different from photoshopping people to make their eyes bluer, lips redder, teeth whiter, and wrinkles less visible.
No shit, data are processed? Did you pathetic little troll actually do anything remotely related to science once in your life, or do you think sleeping through CS101 makes you a scientist? And what the flaming fuck is with the mods rewarding this drivel with insightful mods?
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.