NASA releases photo of light coming of ground on Mars...

[Moontanman]

I'm not sure how serious this is so I'll post it here. Evidently NASA has photographed what appears to be a light shining straight up out of the ground on Mars.

 

http://higherperspective.com/2014/04/nasa-photo-captures-strange-bright-light-coming-mars.html?utm_source=HP

Edited April 8, 2014 by Moontanman

[pwagen]

"This is not a glare from the sun, nor is it an artifact of the photo process."

 

I'll suspend that judgement until I can have a look at a higher res pic.

[swansont]

I'm not sure how serious this is so I'll post it here. Evidently NASA has photographed what appears to be a light shining straight up out of the ground on Mars.

 

http://higherperspective.com/2014/04/nasa-photo-captures-strange-bright-light-coming-mars.html?utm_source=HP

 

Straight up out of the ground? Then how did a camera at 90º see it? This isn't the movies — you wouldn't see it unless it was shining at you, whether directly or via some scattering event.

 

More likely it's a bad pixel on the camera, where permanent or just an anomaly. You should look at videos from e.g. inside of accelerators or Fukushima. High-energy particles saturate individual pixels quite regularly.

 

Edit:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/04/08/curiosity_photo_light_seen_on_mars_is_a_camera_artifact_not_a_real_one.html

 

The rover has a pair of cameras, for stereoscopic photos. The blip only show up in one.

[Schneibster]

I gotta go with swansont here. I'll only make one minor point: Mars does have an atmosphere so theoretically there could be some scattering, and there is also dust. Although Martian dust storms are pretty impenetrable (as I have had many occasions to swear at after spending all afternoon getting prepared and then finding it impossible to see anything but a reddish-orange disc).

 

Later: Ice? Steam? The rectilinearity of it does, as swansont says, look like a couple hot pixels.

 

How many pictures have the feature in them? Has NASA said anything? The site we're looking at is a bit... errr, sensational. Not to say anything nasty about someone's favorite site.

Edited April 8, 2014 by Schneibster

[Moontanman]

It perplexed me, that's why i posted it to the lounge instead of a more serious thread but I did think of something that might have done it. A dust devil, at twilight, static electricity... seems reasonable, they just reported it on national news as well, ABC World News Tonight...

More from NASA http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/display.cfm?News_ID=46974

[imatfaal]

"One possibility," Webster said, "is that the light is the glint from a rock surface reflecting the sun. When these images were taken each day, the sun was in the same direction as the bright spot, west-northwest from the rover, and relatively low in the sky.

 

"The rover science team is also looking at the possibility that the bright spots could be caused by cosmic rays striking the camera's detector," he said.

 

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/NASA-photo-on-strange-light-on-Mars-has-UFO-buffs-5387337.php

[LaurieAG]

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/NASA-photo-on-strange-light-on-Mars-has-UFO-buffs-5387337.php

 

Maybe NASA noticed that the first and third images are from different perspectives (and even different days?) and the 'light's location remains consistent so they ruled out rogue wandering pixels and looked for other alternatives.

 

 

"One possibility," Webster said, "is that the light is the glint from a rock surface reflecting the sun. When these images were taken each day, the sun was in the same direction as the bright spot, west-northwest from the rover, and relatively low in the sky.

[swansont]

Also, from the same source that imatfaal linked to, "among the thousands of images received from Curiosity, ones with bright spots show up nearly every week."

[Schneibster]

I'm going to make my guess that it's a reflection from a polished rock. I think I saw someone say there was a picture from a different perspective, which indicates a different location on the CCD; and it's in the same location against the background; that would rule out hot pixels except as the most astronomical coincidence. That is assuming the statement that there's more than one picture shown in that article is correct; it may not be. I haven't checked; I'm taking LaurieAG's word for it.

[swansont]

OTOH, both times it appeared in the same camera but not in the other from some apparent distance, which is weird. That means a reflection would have to have a fairly narrow angle of divergence, like being hit with a beam of light in one eye but not the other. That requires a collimated source and a pretty flat surface.

[Acme]

OTOH, both times it appeared in the same camera but not in the other from some apparent distance, which is weird. That means a reflection would have to have a fairly narrow angle of divergence, like being hit with a beam of light in one eye but not the other. That requires a collimated source and a pretty flat surface.

So the underground aliens came up and shot a laser at Curiosity's left camera. I knew there had to be a logical explanation that NASA was hiding from us.

[swansont]

So the underground aliens came up and shot a laser at Curiosity's left camera. I knew there had to be a logical explanation that NASA was hiding from us.

 

Yes, laser-tag-playing-aliens has been conspicuously not mentioned.

[Acme]

Yes, laser-tag-playing-aliens has been conspicuously not mentioned.

LASER on Mars: Laughable Accounting by Stipulated Elimination of Reason

Edited April 9, 2014 by Acme

[Schneibster]

Snicker @ "LASER" Backronym.

 

Meanwhile, I'd expect a random flat surface reflection to be fairly limited in angular scope even at that long a distance.

Edited April 10, 2014 by Schneibster

[Spyman]

OTOH, both times it appeared in the same camera but not in the other from some apparent distance, which is weird. That means a reflection would have to have a fairly narrow angle of divergence, like being hit with a beam of light in one eye but not the other. That requires a collimated source and a pretty flat surface.

Well in the second set of images, (chronologically from the day before), the light is behind a hill from the perspective of the left camera so it can't see that spot at all.

 

Comparing the images from SOL 588 and 589 it seems as the locations of spots are moving much more in relevance to the horizon than what the movement of the rover should cause, so I think they are at different locations, but the perspective feels tricky so I could be wrong.

 

Here are the raw images from Curiosity at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory:

 

SOL 588 Navcam: Left B 2014-04-02 09:04:28 UTC Full Resolution

SOL 588 Navcam: Right B 2014-04-02 09:04:28 UTC Full Resolution

 

SOL 589 Navcam: Left B 2014-04-03 10:00:03 UTC Full Resolution

SOL 589 Navcam: Right B 2014-04-03 10:00:03 UTC Full Resolution

[sunshaker]

If it is light reflecting of a flat rock, I would expect with all the millions of pictures we take on earth to be able to find something similar, but i have done a few searches and cannot find nothing.

As anybody found any similar earth pictures?

 

 

Was this april fools day? In the first picture the shadows are facing towards the rover, so should the rock face also be in shadow?

Edited April 10, 2014 by sunshaker

[StringJunky]

Thanks to everyone who has emailed, Tweeted and texted me about the "artificial bright light" seen on Mars. And I'm so sorry to disappoint all the folks who were hoping for aliens, but what you see above is just an image artifact due to a cosmic ray hitting the right-side navigation camera on the Curiosity rover.

If you do a little research, you can see that the light is not in the left-Navcam image that was taken at the exact same moment (see that image below). Imaging experts agree this is a cosmic ray hit, and the fact that it's in one 'eye' but not the other means it's an imaging artifact and not something in the terrain on Mars shooting out a beam of light.

Update: according to Alan Boyle at NBC News, NASA imaging scientists think it could also be either a well-placed flash of reflected sunlight, or light shining through a chink in Curiosity's camera housing.


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-04-bright-mars-image-artifact.html#jCp

Edited April 13, 2014 by StringJunky

[imatfaal]

Thanks to everyone who has emailed, Tweeted and texted me about the "artificial bright light" seen on Mars. And I'm so sorry to disappoint all the folks who were hoping for aliens, but what you see above is just an image artifact due to a cosmic ray hitting the right-side navigation camera on the Curiosity rover.

 

If you do a little research, you can see that the light is not in the left-Navcam image that was taken at the exact same moment (see that image below). Imaging experts agree this is a cosmic ray hit, and the fact that it's in one 'eye' but not the other means it's an imaging artifact and not something in the terrain on Mars shooting out a beam of light.

 

Update: according to Alan Boyle at NBC News, NASA imaging scientists think it could also be either a well-placed flash of reflected sunlight, or light shining through a chink in Curiosity's camera housing.

 

 

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-04-bright-mars-image-artifact.html#jCp

 

So the upto date and specific information from physorg is that it is definitely a cosmic ray for certain; for sure it is that unless it is a reflected sunbeam which we are betting on, even though it seems most likely to be a hole in the camera. I really really don't think it is aliens; but I love the fact that the denial is on the basis that NASA knows it is one of three completely unrelated events. That's pretty poor for a Nasa Ambassador