Latest Mars Photos Show Frosty Landscapes, Ancient Lakebeds 60
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."
Direct links? (Score:5, Informative)
Why does /. never link to the original source?
http://www.uahirise.org/ [uahirise.org]
Re:Wow (Score:2, Informative)
Time to feed the troll.
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]
2) Press releases do absolutely nothing for scientists except get their work out to the public. In a "publish or die" world, press releases are absolutely worthless. In a "publish or die" world, peer-reviewed work is publishing.
3) All scientists in a given field (and often across fields) compete with each other for funding, so making claims that are easily refutable (by real scientists, not worthless internet trolls like yourself) means you won't get funding in the future because a) your work is peer reviewed by your competitors, and b) your grant proposals are peer-reviewed by your competitors. If you're a shit scientist, your competitors will point it out to the funding and publishing agencies and your papers won't be published anymore and you won't get any more funding.
4) Do a little research yourself before making such asinine claims about "weasel words" and "without a single theory." Scientists use words like "may" and "could" and "potentially" when they have good reason to believe it's possible, but also good reason NOT to state something with certainty.
Here, I'll do it for you.
scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Holden+crater+lake+deposits&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=801&as_sdtp=on
scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Holden+crater+megabreccia&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=801&as_sdtp=on
Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)
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] [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.