Rock piles on Mars

[Debi]

Bizarre piles of rock have formed on Mars and NASA isn't quite sure what caused them

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is taking pictures of the Red Planet and a newly released photo has revealed bizarre piles of rock.

The photo released by NASA and taken on Jan. 27, shows boulders set at regular intervals within the stripes of light, on top of the flat ground below. NASA has theorized that it may be a sign of the phenomenon known as "frost heave," but did not specifically say that is what is causing the occurrence.

"With frost heave, repeatedly freezing and thawing of the ground can bring rocks to the surface and organize them into piles, stripes, or even circles," NASA officials wrote in a description of the photo. "On Earth, one of these temperature cycles takes a year, but on Mars it might be connected to changes in the planet's orbit around the Sun that take much longer."

The photo was taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera aboard the MRO and was originally meant to "track the movement of sand dunes near the North Pole of Mars," NASA officials added.

The MRO cost $720 million, of which approximately $450 million was for the spacecraft development and science instruments, and is designed to "examine Martian features ranging from the top of the atmosphere to underground layering," according to a 2005 release from the government agency.

It's also being used to study the "history and distribution of Martian water" and "support future Mars missions by characterizing landing sites and providing a high-data-rate communications relay."

 

[Lynne]

It does look strange

 

[Charleh]

looks like drifts created from wind though. and with a quick google search, it looks like mars is actually pretty windy and dust devils are common there
It's Windy on Mars! |

 

[Benway]

I posted a long critique of this photo as a fake but I'm removing it and will take another look tomorrow.

Edit: Nope. Putting it back. Some of the blurring may be sandstorms but... c'mon!

Original post:
"The MRO cost $720 million, of which approximately $450 million was for the spacecraft development and science instruments"
and apparently $1 on hiring some random guy to do photoshop!
Now I take a dim view of all the pictures of rocks on Mars which are supposed to be alien cities or spaceships or whatever because they all look like... some rocks. I only clicked on this link because I was bored and couldn't sleep, but really? I know that (sadly) NASA does process photos and video of Mars, enhancing the light and clarity (it's always as dark as Earth dusk or night on Mars) and even adding a red tint (!). I also look askance at people who cry 'fake' at everything despite knowing nothing about digital manipulation or effects.
I'm not a professional and I may be wrong, but I spent from 2005 to late last year making photo realistic fake fantasy pictures as a hobby and whatever the quality of my work I do look at things in an analytical way. This looks like something I did in my first few months while I was learning the ropes! I've given critique to photo-collagers on how to avoid common mistakes like :

1) The ground is perfectly in sharp focus. The 'dunes' are not only massively out of focus but actually have motion blur! They are smudged going diagonally from top left to bottom right.

2) The bottom two dunes are not on the same plane as the ground. At least the bottom two are glaringly obvious if you look. All three dunes are cut and pasted from a picture taken from a similar but different angle.

3) Crappy edges on the dunes. You can see the bits were the collager's hand wavered. Piles of sand don't look like clumsy cutting out.

4) Shadows are tricky in a photo-collage. The artist has kept the dunes image as separate layer and just drawn under them with a thick black brush with soft edges. There's worse wavering than the dunes themselves (a common problem with hand drawing shadows.)

5) shadows on the side of the dunes are genuine and don't match the hand drawn shadows at the bases. The base shadows with the sharp contrast make it look like shadow under outcroppings. Sand dunes don't have those! They don't have sharply defined shadows at the base. The shadow on the centre dune is a mess and looks like they let their dog help!

That's just from a quick examination.

I have no idea what NASA are doing here or why.

 

[Benway]

I've seen another thing. I wish I still had my old photo editing software. I want to do some images with circled bits and comparisons with real and fake images!

 

[Benway]

Okay, that clinches it! Look at the bottom of the right hand dune. NO SHADOW! Just a jagged cut-out line. Look at the orientation of the other shadows. There is no way there shouldn't be a shadow there!

 

[Benway]

The best I can think is that this is from a very low quality image and takes 'enhancement' to a new level of badness.
Edit: I'm looking at NASA's site but it's going to take a while to read the technical stuff about what this image actually is.

"It's a photograph, Jim, but not as we know it."

 

[Lynne]

Great analysis Ben. I will look again at this pic

 

[Lynne]

I could only find this one pic. There is very little in the pic to compare size to. I don’t know anything about the process of inhansing pic but it looks surreal.

 

[Benway]

I could only find this one pic. There is very little in the pic to compare size to. I don’t know anything about the process of inhansing pic but it looks surreal.

The "enhanced color" image (this one obviously) is 1km across (from the data on NASA's site). Well it does say it's enhanced here but I haven't yet read up on how. My guess is scribbling over the top of the image in Microsoft Paint.