Re: Face on Mars

Hal Finney (hal@rain.org)
Tue, 31 Mar 1998 23:07:20 -0800


Anton Sherwood, <dasher@netcom.com>, writes:
> Keep in mind that one of the "eyes" is (iirc) a reference-dot, i.e. an
> artifact of the camera, not part of the picture in nature.

I'm not familiar with this claim.

> Also, every picture I've ever seen of the "face" is the SAME IMAGE.
> How many times have our various machines passed over Cydonia?
> Shouldn't there be more than one image of the site??
> If two or three of them show a "face", let me know!

See http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/photo_gallery/photogallery-mars.html#controversy
for all the images which show the region of the Face. You usually see the
same one because it is the best one.

See http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/target/announcement2.html for the
schedule of photography attempts for the Face as well as the Viking
and Pathfinder landers. The first attempt at the Face will be April 5,
with a delay of about 24 hours before it is posted on the net.

Because of positional and orbital uncertainties, they estimate only about
a 30%-50% chance of photographing the target object on any given try.
I would imagine that the odds would go up on the later tries as they
are able to see how far they were off on the earlier ones. So I am
reasonably optimistic that they will get new pictures of the Face within
the next month.

See http://www.psrw.com/~markc/MiscArticles/Predictions/Predictions.html
for predictions of what the new images should show, by a non-crackpot
believer in the significance of the Face.

Hal