Revealing the True Colors of NASA

[Duane Daman]

What color is the sky on Mars?

At night, of course, it's black. During the daytime, scientists once expected to find a blue sky because of Rayleigh scattering (the process that colors the sky blue on Earth - the shorter wavelengths of light are more easily scattered, so it is mostly the blue light from the Sun that we see elsewhere in the sky.) However, when first the Vikings and then the Pathfinder landed on Mars, they saw a pink sky. This color comes from the ubiquitous Martian red dust which is stirred up by the winds and carried up into the atmosphere so much that the sky takes on the color of the dust.

http://meridiani2.usc.edu/faq/mars.html#17

NOT TRUE ! ... This is just some science web site misinformation covering nasa's fibs .... Here' the real story .

According to DiGregorio’s narrative:

"At about 2:00 P.M. PDT, the first color image from the surface of another planet, Mars, began to emerge on the JPL color video monitors located in many of the surrounding buildings, specifically set up for JPL employees and media personnel to view the Viking images. Gil and Ron Levin sat in the main control room where dozens of video monitors and anxious technicians waited to see this historic first color picture. As the image developed on the monitors, the crowd of scientists, technicians, and media reacted enthusiastically to a scene that would be absolutely unforgettable – Mars in color. The image showed an Arizona-like landscape: blue sky, brownish-red desert soil, and gray rocks with green splotches ...

"Gil Levin commented to Patricia Straat [his co-Investigator] and his son Ron, ‘Look at that image! It looks like Arizona’ [below].

"Two hours after the first color image appeared on the monitors, a technician abruptly changed the image from the light-blue sky and Arizona-like landscape to a uniform orange-red sky and landscape [below]. Ron Levin looked in disbelief as the technician went from monitor to monitor making the change. Minutes later, Ron followed him, resetting the colors to their original appearance. Levin and Straat were interrupted when they heard someone being chastised.

It was Ron Levin being chewed out by the Viking Project Director himself, James S. Martin, Jr. Gil Levin went immediately and asked, "What is going on?" Martin had caught Ron changing all the color monitors back to their original settings. He warned Ron that if he tried something like that again, he’d be thrown out of JPL for good. The Director then asked a TRW engineer assisting the Biology team, Ron Gilje, to follow Ron Levin around to every color monitor and change it back to the red landscape.

"What Gil Levin, Ron and Patricia Straat did not know (even to this writing) is that the order to change the colors came directly from the NASA Administrator himself, Dr. James Fletcher. Months later, Gil Levin sought out the JPL Viking Imaging Team technician who actually made the changes and asked why it was done. The technician responded that he had instructions from the Viking Imaging Team that the Mars sky and landscape should be red and went around to all the monitors ‘tweaking’ them to make it so. Gil Levin said, ‘The new settings showed the American flag (painted on the Landers – below as having purple stripes. The technician said that the Mars atmosphere made the flag appear that way."

As someone who was also at JPL that afternoon, and vividly remembers a similar shock -- when the "Arizona Mars" initially flashed on the JPL monitors was suddenly transformed into a Martian "Red Light District" – I now kick myself for not asking lots more questions.

But, it was 1976 -- and we all trusted our Space Agency back then ….

One of the basic questions that I should have asked involves the physics behind JPL’s abrupt color alterations. Or, as Gil Levin put it:

"If atmospheric dust were scattering red light and not blue, the sky would appear red, but since the red would be at least partially removed by the time the light hit the surface, its [the direct sunlight’s] reflection from the surface would make the surface appear more blue than red. There would be less red light [in the direct sunlight illumination] left to reflect. And what about the sharp shadows of the rocks in the black and white images yesterday? If significant scattering of the light on Mars occurred [from lots of red dust in the atmosphere], the sharp shadows in those images would not be present, or at best, would appear fuzzy because of diffusion by the [atmospheric] scattering [emphasis added]!"

Levin was describing the well-known phenomenon of "Raleigh scattering" -- whereby the similar-sized molecules of all planetary atmospheres (be it the primary nitrogen of Earth; the carbon dioxide atmosphere of Mars; or even the predominantly hydrogen atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn!) all produce blue skies when sunlight passes through them.

If you examine the long Martian photographic record – which encompasses hundreds of thousands of images, acquired by dozens of observatories even before the Space age dawned – you can see blatant evidence that Levin’s right and JPL is wrong … regarding the scientifically expected “color” of the Martian atmosphere.

.................................................

"Both Ron Wichelman [of JPL’s Image Processing laboratory (IPL)] and I were responsible for the color quality control of the Viking Lander photographs, and Dr. Thomas Mutch, the Viking Imaging Team leader, told us that he got a call from the NASA Administrator asking that we destroy the Mars blue sky negative created from the original digital data [emphasis added] …."

Destroy official NASA data?!

This bizarre sequence of events raises too many disturbing questions … like … why was the Administrator of NASA so determined to conceal the "true" colors of Mars from the American people and the world, in 1976? Why would he order the head of the Viking Imaging Team to literally eliminate an important piece of historical evidence from the official Mission archive – the original "blue-sky negative" – if the initial release was only "an honest technical mistake?!" Wouldn’t that record be an important part of the ultimate, triumphant story of "NASA scientists eliminating initial scientific errors, in their continued exploration of the frontier and alien environment of another world …?"

And, why would a young teenager – and the son of one of the key investigators on the Viking Mission, no less! – actually be threatened with expulsion by the Director of the entire Project … for simply "tweaking a couple of color monitors" around the Lab …?

In truth, none of Ron Levin’s story (or Van Der Woude’s significant confirmation), makes any scientific sense … unless … certain individuals in NASA in 1976 felt compelled to hide – and at all costs – the visible appearance of the actual Martian surface ….

Thirty years have now gone by, and some of us (unfortunately, when it comes to NASA) are considerably wiser. In the interim, because of the continued democratization of computer technology (and the existence of the Web), a whole new generation has now been enabled to revisit those original Mars images … and the crucial questions that go with them … to investigate for themselves this bizarre chapter in an "altered Martian story."

From the startlingly simple process of merely reinstating the original Viking surface color data (now available at certain official NASA websites), so the flag appears as "normal" (!) (like in this version, produced by Barry Arneson in 2001 – below), one gets the distinct impression that "certain individuals" in NASA – three decades ago – for some arcane reason, didn’t feel Americans were "ready" then … to see the real "Red Planet."

Oops again !

Read the entire story here .... NASA ... Never A Straight Answer .

http://www.lunaranomalies.com/colors.htm

[Duane Daman]

Evidence that NASA is altering the true colors of the pictures of Mars

Investigation shows that there are several indications that the NASA is tampering with the colours, and changes them from an Earth-like environment into a red inhospitable environment. But it seems that the young scientists at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) are not convenient with this.

Changed colour tabs

Here is shown the first found evidence the NASA is altering the colours, in such a way, that blue is displayed as red:

The above images can be found on http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/pre.../20040108a.html (If they haven't changed the pictures meanwhile...)

(Update: Yes, they have now (Jan 16th) cut the GREEN tab out of the picture, and on the lastest 360 degrees panorama picture they cut out the whole calibration target!)

Please follow the hyperlink and investigate the page. Note that the color calibration target shown on the other pictures where you can't see the sky, does have the colour blue on Mars and Earth, but on the large panoramic picture on the top of the page, they have changed blue into red! What happened? The blue has changed into red. This also explains why the green tab has turned into orange, because green is a combination of blue and yellow. If you change the blue component into red, yellow + red will give orange, exactly what happened in the picture. This means: All green elements in the complete picture have changed into orange, and all blue elements have changed into red!

JPL has it right

At the press conference last saturday, the JPL-scientists showed the latest picture of the Martian landscape. It showed a salmon-coloured desert with a blue sky. It seems that they did it on purpose, since previous pictures were all extremely red. Below the pictures of the conference are shown:

The above pictures were taken from Associated Press

However, the people of the NASA have altered the colours into this

.............................................

To see more of nasa's dishonest tampering with other Martian photos go here .

http://www.libertythink.com/totalinformation/BlueMars.htm

[Craig Lamson]

Opps!

http://www.atsnn.com/marscolors.html

TOP STORY: NASA Is Not Altering Mars Colors.

Posted by: Kano

On: Sun January, 18 2004 @ 03:34 GMT

This article is a brief summarised explanation of how the PanCam on the Mars Spirit Rover operates, in relation to the strange appearance of the calibration sundial in some pictures. The question was first raised by ATS member AArchAngel, and has been discussed at length in this AboveTopSecret forum thread and ATSNN story:

thread

Mars Spirit Rover Picture analysis.

In this thread I will attempt to summarise my posts to the larger thread.

What are you talking about?

Ok, the initial alarm was raised after it was noticed that the color-calibration sundial mounted on the rover, looked quite markedly different in the Mars-Panorama shots compared to its regular appearance.

Immediately wide-ranging theories began to pop up. At this stage I knew very little of the particulars of the PanCam so I decided to go and see what the Horses mouth had to say. I sent out a swag of emails to the NASA marsrover team, the Athena Instrument team at Cornell University, and the long shot, an email to Assoc. Professor James Bell. Who is the Pancam Payload Element Lead for the mission.

Now, getting no response from the Athena team, and an automated response from the NASA team. I was amazed and delighted to see that Dr. Bell had indeed taken the time out of his busy schedule to help explain this quirk in the panorama pictures. His email response is below:

quote:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks for writing. The answer is that the color chips on the sundial have different colors in the near-infrared range of Pancam filters. For example, the blue chip is dark near 600 nm, where humans see red light, but is especially bright at 750 nm, which is used as "red" for many Pancam images. So it appears pink in RGB composites. We chose the pigments for the chips on purpose this way, so they could provide different patterns of brightnesses regardless of which filters we used. The details of the colors of the pigments are published in a paper I wrote in the December issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research (Planets), in case you want more details...

All of us tired folks on the team are really happy that so many people around the world are following the mission and sending their support and encouragement...

Thanks,

Jim Bell

Cornell U.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now, as far as the pink tab where the blue one should be, that email is infact the complete answer. But its not easily understandable to the layman. Below I will attempt to explain why this occurs.

...... See link!

_______________________________

YOU REALLY NEED TO READ ALL OF THE STUFF AT THE LINK!

Duane, this is what happens whn you limit your research to the bogus CT sites......

Edited February 25, 2007 by Craig Lamson

[Duane Daman]

I see that you chose to post the one and only, NASA covers their own disception with more misinformation link .... Gee, what a surprise .

How about try reading the info from this link at the bottom of the article ?

"Three spacecrafts have successfully landed on the surface of Mars. There were two Viking landers in 1976 and the Pathfinder lander in 1997. These landers retrieved a great deal of valuable information about the Martian surface, including a large number of color images. In the 27 years since the Viking spacecraft landed and the 5 years since Pathfinder landed, there has been no consensus on the calibration of these color images. The coloration of the Martian sky and landscape has been the subject of numerous scientific papers.

The first color image (12A006/001) of the surface of Mars was taken July 21, 1976, at the Viking 1 site, one day after the landing. Immediately displayed on color monitors at JPL, as seen in Figure 1a, the landscape awed observers with its resemblance to that of Arizona. Typical desert colorations of soil and rock, ranging from umber sand to yellowish-brown and olivine-colored rocks stood out clearly under a blue sky. TWO HOURS LATER , HOWEVER , THE OFFICIAL IMAGE WAS CHANGED TO THE MONOTONE OF ORANGE-RED (NASA P-17164), Figure 1b, that, with few exceptions, has prevailed in NASA-published images of Mars ever since, as presented by Mutch et al.[1]. However, a spectral analysis of color images of the Viking 1 site reported[2] a broader palate. The paper made the first, and perhaps only, reported use of JPL’s Image Processing Laboratory to analyze digitally the red, green and blue color channels of the images taken by the Viking 1 lander camera. In addition to studying the color images, their RGB components were transformed into saturation, hue and intensity components to enhance subtle deviations. When these components were equally amplified to produce an equal average sensitivity over the spectral bandpass, the resulting “radiometric” (closest possible approach in appearance to a human observer) images very closely resembled the first color image (12A006/001). Among the range of colors, the paper reported that some of the rocks exhibited greenish patterns that apparently changed between images taken 301 sols apart. Radiometric images of lichen-bearing terrestrial rocks taken and processed through the same system as were the Viking images showed a close resemblance of the lichen colonies to the greenish patches on the Mars rocks. Inclusion in the analysis of three near-IR channels available on the Martian images enhanced the greenness of the patches that were, to the sensitivity of the method, virtually indistinguishable from the lichen colonies on the terrestrial rocks."

http://mars.spherix.com/spie2003/SPIE_2003_Color_Paper.htm

The two articles I posted here about nasa deliberately changing the color of Mars , are not conspiracy sites ... So you're wrong about that also ... Try reading this again and maybe you will understand what happened and why .

"Two hours after the first color image appeared on the monitors, a technician abruptly changed the image from the light-blue sky and Arizona-like landscape to a uniform orange-red sky and landscape [below]. Ron Levin looked in disbelief as the technician went from monitor to monitor making the change. Minutes later, Ron followed him, resetting the colors to their original appearance. Levin and Straat were interrupted when they heard someone being chastised.

It was Ron Levin being chewed out by the Viking Project Director himself, James S. Martin, Jr. Gil Levin went immediately and asked, "What is going on?" Martin had caught Ron changing all the color monitors back to their original settings. He warned Ron that if he tried something like that again, he’d be thrown out of JPL for good. The Director then asked a TRW engineer assisting the Biology team, Ron Gilje, to follow Ron Levin around to every color monitor and change it back to the red landscape.

"What Gil Levin, Ron and Patricia Straat did not know (even to this writing) is that the order to change the colors came directly from the NASA Administrator himself, Dr. James Fletcher. Months later, Gil Levin sought out the JPL Viking Imaging Team technician who actually made the changes and asked why it was done. The technician responded that he had instructions from the Viking Imaging Team that the Mars sky and landscape should be red and went around to all the monitors ‘tweaking’ them to make it so. Gil Levin said, ‘The new settings showed the American flag (painted on the Landers – below as having purple stripes. The technician said that the Mars atmosphere made the flag appear that way."

The color of the Martian images were CHANGED ON PURPOSE ... and no amount of nasa disinformation can refute that unhappy fact .

So which flag do you salute Craig ? .... NASA's phony one ?

Or the real one ?

Considering the junk you post here , my guess would be the one with the maroon stripes and the purple stars .

[Craig Lamson]

Considering the junk you post here , my guess would be the one with the maroon stripes and the purple stars .

Jeez Duane, I've read and UNDERSTOOD everything BOTH of us have posted, can you say the same?

Try again, or is your head spinning from all the data you need to sort through to understand how this stuff works.

Back to the drawing board...or is that google and CT sites?

BTW, Was that lander REALLY cyan in color?

Oh..that first article is from Hoagland, which IS a CT site, Libertythink is a kook site as well.

Edited February 26, 2007 by Craig Lamson

[Duane Daman]

That's right Craig .... EVERY site that is NOT a nasa site and PROVES that they are not being truthful about ANYTHING is a "kook conspiracy site " .... Jeez is right .... So does this mean that EVERYONE else is wrong and only nasa is right ? ....The lid can't be kept on their deliberate deception and secrets forever ... Too many people are now on to their tricks .

If nasa claimed that the sky was falling , I guess you would believe that disinformation too.

[Craig Lamson]

That's right Craig .... EVERY site that is NOT a nasa site and PROVES that they are not being truthful about ANYTHING is a "kook conspiracy site " .... Jeez is right .... So does this mean that EVERYONE else is wrong and only nasa is right ? ....The lid can't be kept on their deliberate deception and secrets forever ... Too many people are now on to their tricks .

If nasa claimed that the sky was falling , I guess you would believe that disinformation too.

Sheesh, please show me where Above Top Secret is a NASA site. YOUR problem is that YOU think EVERY site that PROVES you wrong is a NASA site. How open minded of you!

The only people playing tricks are the ones who fool the ignorant. You seem to quote these people quite a bit!

Facts are stubborn things. I'm still waiting for you to post some.

Edited February 26, 2007 by Craig Lamson

[Duane Daman]

This is one of the nasa links in the Above Top Secret article you posted here ....

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/spirit.html

Among all of these below .

Photoshop-only explanation here.

Download these 2 sets of 3 images.

Series 1.

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...00P2899L4M1.JPG

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...00P2899L5M1.JPG

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...00P2899L6M1.JPG

Series 2.

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...00P2095L2M1.JPG

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...00P2095L5M1.JPG

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...00P2095L6M1.JPG

THESE ARE ALL NASA SITES !!! ( hint ... nasa is written in the http addy )

I have posted facts here ... They are just not the facts you like because they show up nasa for what they really are .... DISHONEST !

No matter what kind of mind games you play on this forum with all of my posts , there is one thing you can not refute with a thousand nasa disinformation articles .... They CHANGED THE COLOR OF THE MARS PHOTOS .... and in my book , this is proof of clear DECEPTION .

Edited February 26, 2007 by Duane Daman

[Craig Lamson]

This is one of the nasa links where the Above Top Secret article originally came from ....

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/spirit.html

Among all of these below .

Photoshop-only explanation here.

Download these 2 sets of 3 images.

Series 1.

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...00P2899L4M1.JPG

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...00P2899L5M1.JPG

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...00P2899L6M1.JPG

Series 2.

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...00P2095L2M1.JPG

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...00P2095L5M1.JPG

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...00P2095L6M1.JPG

THESE ARE ALL NASA SITES !!! ( hint ... nasa is written in the http addy )

I have posted facts here ... There are just not the facts you like because they show up nasa for what they really are .... DISHONEST !

Good grief Duane, if this is how you think you show "facts" its no wonder why you get beat so often.

Just to educate you a little bit. The links you posted are where the author of the ATS article obtained the image DATA! He THEN TOOK THIS DATA and explained VIA EMPERICAL ( and well documented) evidence WHY the claims you have posted are wrong.

He did exactly what you claim to want as proof. He was a third party who produced soild research and emperical data....and he proved your vaunted CT sites wrong.

And since he beat you at your own game you claim he is part of a NASA site....wow!

Now how about you deal directly with his research and emperical data (Inote he details this so YOU can repete it) instead of claiming, as always that his data is NASA disimformation.

Above Top Secret is NOT a NASA site.

[Craig Lamson]

No matter what kind of mind games you play on this forum with all of my posts , there is one thing you can not refute with a thousand nasa disinformation articles .... They CHANGED THE COLOR OF THE MARS PHOTOS .... and in my book , this is proof of clear DECEPTION .

Thanks for once again proving my point that ANY site that proves you wrong, you claim is a NASA disinformation site.

Now lets deal with your second claim. What is the CORRECT color of MARS? And how do you know that as a fact?

[Duane Daman]

Correction Lamson ... I proved you wrong and you can't stand it ... So now you use some more of your typical distraction tactics .

The correct color of Mars would be the FIRST photos which came in BEFORE nasa ordered one of their unfortunate employees to CHANGE IT .

What is nasa hiding about Mars by altering it's real color ? Maybe that scientists have been WRONG all these years and Mars is not so red after all ?

At this point I'm beginning to wonder what nasa hasn't lied about .

[Craig Lamson]

Correction Lamson ... I proved you wrong and you can't stand it ... So now you use some more of your typical distraction tactics .

The correct color of Mars would be the FIRST photos which came in BEFORE nasa ordered one of their unfortunate employees to CHANGE IT .

What is nasa hiding about Mars by altering it's real color ? Maybe that scientists have been WRONG all these years and Mars is not so red after all ?

At this point I'm beginning to wonder what nasa hasn't lied about .

No you proved YOURSELF wrong. You are claiming because the author of the ATS article got his image data from NASA that his site is a NASA site. BUT the articles YOU posted got their image data from the same place...NASA. Your sites are not NASA sites because they got their data from NASA, but MY site IS a NASA site because they got thier image data from NASA? Sheesh, Duane, when you are in a hole the best thing to do is to STOP DIGGING!

Sorry, you failed "FACTS" 101...

And WHY would the first image to pop up be the CORRECT COLOR? Was it properly processed? Were the proper filtratrion factors applied to the post processing? And you KNOW THIS HOW? Oh yes...from a CT website!

Edited February 26, 2007 by Craig Lamson

[Duane Daman]

Poor Craig , you never can admit it when you are wrong and nasa has been deceptive .

Regardless of which sites post this information the FACTS remain the same .... nasa altered the color of Mars ... and no mind games you play here , with which are nasa sites and which are not nasa sites , is going to change that fact .

Mars is not red .... The first photos that came in were changed from the true colors ... The real color of the American flag was the dead givaway ....

So now the whole world knows how deceptive and untruthful nasa really is ... As if pretending to land manned missions on the moon was not bad enough , they have even changed the color of the stars and stripes !!

Give it up Lamson ... You lost this one .

[Craig Lamson]

Poor Craig , you never can admit it when you are wrong and nasa has been deceptive .

Regardless of which sites post this information the FACTS remain the same .... nasa altered the color of Mars ... and no mind games you play here , with which are nasa sites and which are not nasa sites , is going to change that fact .

Mars is not red .... The first photos that came in were changed from the true colors ... The real color of the American flag was the dead givaway ....

So now the whole world knows how deceptive and untruthful nasa really is ... As if pretending to land manned missions on the moon was not bad enough , they have even changed the color of the stars and stripes !!

Give it up Lamson ... You lost this one .

Yoiu are the one who can't admit defeat Duane.

Again HOW do you know that the first image WAS THE CORRECT COLOR for Mars? And when you look at the sample images you posted, HOW can you tell ANYTHING about the color values? These images are posterized beyond usefulness. Can you understand this? And you want to use these images to PROVE something? SHeesh!

You have NO facts, simply your vivid imagination. It's you who should give it up Duane,

[Duane Daman]

The sad facts of the color being ordered altered , are in both articles I posted here ... I don't make this stuff up to bust out nasa's lies and trickery ... Other people , who are qualified to do this , bust them out .

If you really can't understand that nasa ordered the images of Mars changed to show the planet is red , when it isn't , then you would be the one who is acting ignorant , not me .

Attacking everything I post is just a silly game you play on this forum ... and saying that I am ignorant about everything I post is another game you play .

Read the articles ... It's very clear that nasa ordered the color changed in the Mars photos ... and if you don't believe these articles , then I will be very happy to post dozens of others which state the same tragic facts .

Like I said before Lamson ... you lost this one .

Edited February 26, 2007 by Duane Daman