A Hole in Mars (APOD 28 May 2007)

[BMAONE23]

Try this one
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/ ... se_big.jpg

Most of the small black spots appear to be holes too

[orin stepanek]

Try this one
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/ ... se_big.jpg

Most of the small black spots appear to be holes too

Some look like holes at that; others look like craters with shadows in them. Truly some differences apply.
Orin

[neil]

There are several reasons why humans or other beings might want to live in caves, far below the surface of Mars. Warmer 2 higher air pressure 3 water 4 reduced radiation 5 filter out the super oxide dust
They could use grow lights to grow food that requires photosynthesis. There is little present evidence for beings living on or in Mars. Neil

[AZJames]

I think I would like to have a bit more info before a definitive statement about what I think it is. For example, what was the sun angle when the picture was taken? If the sun angle was very low, then everything I see could be consistent with the collapsed roof of a lava tube. In the extremely thin atmosphere on Mars, anything in the shade should be completely black, especially when seen from orbit. Also, the light colored surrounding terrain could be expected to overwhelm the camera optics.

The presence of several other "black spots" in the general area (collapsed lava tubes?) plus the fact that the whole area is on the slopes of a large shield volcano appears to be consistent with the collapsed lava tube theory.

I would think that ground penetrating radar should give some indication whether underground voids exist, even in the face of limitations in resolution. If lava tubes are present, they might be expected to run for kilometers.

A pit of crude oil? I don't think so. If oil ever existed on Mars in such an exposed position it would long since have broken down over the billions of years since it's formation.

Having said all this, if the sun angle was high, then I would probably have to rethink!

[motteler]

I see this not as a lack of light in a hole but as a very dark filling of a hole. My evidence is in the in the HiRise version at http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/200 ... _cut_b.jpg Notice at about the 4 O'clock position in the original photo there appears to be a collapse of the wall that spreads out on a black "floor". It appears to me that it is a hole with a light absorbing substance covering a flat floor. Another indication is the sharpness of the edges even where there is no direct illumination (9 O'Clock). The sharpness indicates a discontinuity of the edge yet we have several intrusions on the edge (4 O'clock and 11 O'clock as examples).

I agree. From the angle of the sun in the photo, some interior detail would be discernable even if it's a vertical shaft (note the bright face of the cliff edge on the right). This must be a solid floor of extremely dark material that does not reflect light. You don't find such sharp definition unless it's an overhang all around, which seems highly unlikely.

[Andy Wade]

I see this not as a lack of light in a hole but as a very dark filling of a hole. My evidence is in the in the HiRise version at http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/200 ... _cut_b.jpg Notice at about the 4 O'clock position in the original photo there appears to be a collapse of the wall that spreads out on a black "floor". It appears to me that it is a hole with a light absorbing substance covering a flat floor. Another indication is the sharpness of the edges even where there is no direct illumination (9 O'Clock). The sharpness indicates a discontinuity of the edge yet we have several intrusions on the edge (4 O'clock and 11 O'clock as examples).

I agree. From the angle of the sun in the photo, some interior detail would be discernable even if it's a vertical shaft (note the bright face of the cliff edge on the right). This must be a solid floor of extremely dark material that does not reflect light. You don't find such sharp definition unless it's an overhang all around, which seems highly unlikely.

I've been inside the lava tubes on Lanzarote (Canary Islands) and there are places where the roof has collapsed above a lava tube and you can't see anything inside from above because of the overhanging roof around the holes. I'm fairly confident that this looks like just that sort of thing. Well, as confident as you can be knowing that this is on the side of a huge Martian volcano, that is. The hole does also have what appears to me to be 'thick' edges too.
And it is bl00dy big...



I'd go further and say that if a huge intact lava tube was hit dead centre by even a small meterorite, I reckon it would make just such a hole in the roof.

[motteler]

I've been inside the lava tubes on Lanzarote (Canary Islands) and there are places where the roof has collapsed above a lava tube and you can't see anything inside from above because of the overhanging roof around the holes. I'm fairly confident that this looks like just that sort of thing. Well, as confident as you can be knowing that this is on the side of a huge Martian volcano, that is. The hole does also have what appears to me to be 'thick' edges too.
And it is bl00dy big...

I'd go further and say that if a huge intact lava tube was hit dead centre by even a small meterorite, I reckon it would make just such a hole in the roof.[/quote]

I've also been inside lava tubes here on the Big Island of Hawaii, and yes, this is a likely scenario. R. D. Frederick writes in "Modified Martian Lava Tubes as Habitats" that Martian lava tubes dwarf their counterparts on Earth. He refers to these holes as "skylights" in them. Here's the link: http://www.norwebster.com/astrohit/lavatube.html

I will subscribe to this explanation until something better comes along!

Aloha,

Lee

[Andy Wade]

I've been inside the lava tubes on Lanzarote (Canary Islands) and there are places where the roof has collapsed above a lava tube and you can't see anything inside from above because of the overhanging roof around the holes. I'm fairly confident that this looks like just that sort of thing. Well, as confident as you can be knowing that this is on the side of a huge Martian volcano, that is. The hole does also have what appears to me to be 'thick' edges too.
And it is bl00dy big...

I'd go further and say that if a huge intact lava tube was hit dead centre by even a small meterorite, I reckon it would make just such a hole in the roof.

I've also been inside lava tubes here on the Big Island of Hawaii, and yes, this is a likely scenario. R. D. Frederick writes in "Modified Martian Lava Tubes as Habitats" that Martian lava tubes dwarf their counterparts on Earth. He refers to these holes as "skylights" in them. Here's the link: http://www.norwebster.com/astrohit/lavatube.html

I will subscribe to this explanation until something better comes along!

Aloha,

Lee

What a great idea! Until someone proves that the 'black' element of the hole is solid or liquid matter then I'll stick with this theory.

[DerekSmith]

I think this is a hole, possibly a skylight and if you look carefully into the black you will see why I think this is the case. If the sun is indeed at a low angle and is coming from ca 7 o'clock - 8 o'clock direction and the thin Martian sky is not producing very much skylight then the effect should be expected.

Although our eyes and the camera that recorder this image are capable of 'seeing' through a range of light intensities covering 12 to 15 stops, we should not forget that we are not looking at this effect directly, we are looking at it on a computer screen which generally has only about 6 stops of light intensity resolution. Once you get down to the lowest level of 'dark' your monitor displays them all as a single level of blackness. So to see if there is anything in the 'hole' all we have to do is to expand the various shades of black so that our monitors can display them.

Doing this to the 'hole' you get this -



You can see the walls of the hole continue to descend into the dark and the 'sunlit' side showing a much more illuminated slope area. there are also some dark objects on the hole floor in the lower half of the hole which might be the debris from the fallen roof.

Taking the higher resolution image from the 3 - 4 o'clock image, and treating it the same way, you again are able to see the wall of the hole descending into the black shadow area



If anyone is able to provide a very high resolution image of this feature, I will be happy to process it in this manner so that you can squint into the shaddows, past the limits of your PC monitor.

[DerekSmith]

The images posted can only be resolved into 13 levels of 'lightness' within the black of the 'hole'. The files posted have only 8 bit colour density resolution, that means the lightness can only be described in one of 256 steps of lightness (of which only 13 steps lay within the 'black' hole). Generally digital images are captured with 12 bit or 16 bit brightness information but this has to be discarded in order to display the images within web pages. If these images were captured with 12 bit resolution then they will describe 4096 brightness steps and a large number of those steps will be within that seemingly black hole.

If the original files are available in higher than 8 bit resolution then far more can be done to open up the blackness of this anomaly.

Does anyone have access to these files? I would love to work on them.

Derek

[Andy Wade]

The images posted can only be resolved into 13 levels of 'lightness' within the black of the 'hole'. The files posted have only 8 bit colour density resolution, that means the lightness can only be described in one of 256 steps of lightness (of which only 13 steps lay within the 'black' hole). Generally digital images are captured with 12 bit or 16 bit brightness information but this has to be discarded in order to display the images within web pages. If these images were captured with 12 bit resolution then they will describe 4096 brightness steps and a large number of those steps will be within that seemingly black hole.

If the original files are available in higher than 8 bit resolution then far more can be done to open up the blackness of this anomaly.

Does anyone have access to these files? I would love to work on them.

Derek

Fan-
daby-
dozy.
Truly excellent stuff Derek.

[pjsuther]

If this were the case, would have thought the HiRISE team would have thought of it already...

[orin stepanek]

I think this is a hole, possibly a skylight and if you look carefully into the black you will see why I think this is the case. If the sun is indeed at a low angle and is coming from ca 7 o'clock - 8 o'clock direction and the thin Martian sky is not producing very much skylight then the effect should be expected.

Although our eyes and the camera that recorder this image are capable of 'seeing' through a range of light intensities covering 12 to 15 stops, we should not forget that we are not looking at this effect directly, we are looking at it on a computer screen which generally has only about 6 stops of light intensity resolution. Once you get down to the lowest level of 'dark' your monitor displays them all as a single level of blackness. So to see if there is anything in the 'hole' all we have to do is to expand the various shades of black so that our monitors can display them.

Doing this to the 'hole' you get this -



You can see the walls of the hole continue to descend into the dark and the 'sunlit' side showing a much more illuminated slope area. there are also some dark objects on the hole floor in the lower half of the hole which might be the debris from the fallen roof.

Taking the higher resolution image from the 3 - 4 o'clock image, and treating it the same way, you again are able to see the wall of the hole descending into the black shadow area



If anyone is able to provide a very high resolution image of this feature, I will be happy to process it in this manner so that you can squint into the shaddows, past the limits of your PC monitor.

Have you ever seen photos of water where the deeper the water was the darker the color! This almost looks like that. It may indeed be a vent shaft; but I'm not sure.
Orin

[Fátima Rocha]

Dear God!
It is not a hole in Mars, it is a hole in the paper of the image. The image is not complete, because if it is complete we can see lots of holes.

http://zuserver2.star.ucl.ac.uk/~apod/a ... 70724.html

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/html/ ... 38a02.html

http://www.arcetri.astro.it/~palla/ANDR ... iking2.gif

http://www.space.com/images/Mars-Image1.gif

[DerekSmith]

If this were the case, would have thought the HiRISE team would have thought of it already...

Hi pj,

I am sure that they have already done this and much more -- this is just bog standard image enhancement. I, and thousands of others, do this sort of manipulation every day to bring detail out of the shadows on digital photos.

In this example the bike is standing in front of a stone wall with trees but in the original to the left, all you can see is black yet if you had been standing there your eyes would have seen the wall and trees easily. The picture is there, it just needs to be put into the range of your PC monitor to be displayed.



Prove it for yourself, take this image and use off the shelf software to lighten the LHS image and you will see the background appear.

[DerekSmith]

OMG,

The planet is riddled with holes, all perfectly and geometrically spaced. they must be the entrances to a vast underground metropolis.




Fátima Rocha -- HAVE YOU FOUND THE MARTIANS??

[Zeagustoni]

I've been inside the lava tubes on Lanzarote (Canary Islands) and there are places where the roof has collapsed above a lava tube and you can't see anything inside from above because of the overhanging roof around the holes. I'm fairly confident that this looks like just that sort of thing. Well, as confident as you can be knowing that this is on the side of a huge Martian volcano, that is. The hole does also have what appears to me to be 'thick' edges too.
And it is bl00dy big...

I'd go further and say that if a huge intact lava tube was hit dead centre by even a small meterorite, I reckon it would make just such a hole in the roof.

I've also been inside lava tubes here on the Big Island of Hawaii, and yes, this is a likely scenario. R. D. Frederick writes in "Modified Martian Lava Tubes as Habitats" that Martian lava tubes dwarf their counterparts on Earth. He refers to these holes as "skylights" in them. Here's the link: http://www.norwebster.com/astrohit/lavatube.html

I will subscribe to this explanation until something better comes along!

Aloha,

Lee

Lava tubes are the answer. You can see those pits made of collapsed ceiling of lava tube at Galapagos volcanoes.



Search Google Earth at:

Big ones:

0° 0'59.91"S
91°32'42.07"W

0° 0'49.24"S
91°32'43.97"W

Smal ones:

0° 0'46.03"S
91°32'37.29"W

0° 3'2.70"N
91°24'17.68"W

Sequence of pits over a lava tube:

0° 5'10.50"N
91°19'29.58"W



(I'm sorry, Fatima Rocha... hehehe)

Regards,

[rigelan]

derek, those are gigantic rivets used for the massive ceiling of the those underdwellers on mars.

[jimsaruff]

Thanks to all who took time to educate and entertain us here.

[pjsuther]

Derek,

Thanks for the clarification. It just seems disingenuous for the HiRise team to put out these images and explanations as if, short of a closer look (in whatever form that would take), this was the best guess they could come up with based on current interplanetary photo technology. Clearly not the case...

[orin stepanek]

Lava tubes are the answer. You can see those pits made of collapsed ceiling of lava tube at Galapagos volcanoes.



Search Google Earth at:

Big ones:

0° 0'59.91"S
91°32'42.07"W

0° 0'49.24"S
91°32'43.97"W

Smal ones:

0° 0'46.03"S
91°32'37.29"W

0° 3'2.70"N
91°24'17.68"W

Sequence of pits over a lava tube:

0° 5'10.50"N
91°19'29.58"W



(I'm sorry, Fatima Rocha... hehehe)

Regards,

I like this. Looks very much like the hole on Mars! Thanks Zeagustoni
Orin

[Wadsworth]

I like this. Looks very much like the hole on Mars! Thanks Zeagustoni
Orin

Yes it does.

[iamlucky13]

Doing this to the 'hole' you get this -

Excellent work Derek. Somehow I didn't even think of trying enhance the brightness and contrast of the images. The progression of the features appears much more natural-looking than the original images suggest.

[Qev]

Bear in mind that you're playing with JPEG images (unless you've found a source other than the one I did for these images), which means any region of 'solid' colour is going to be full of JPEG compression artifacts. So odds are, any detail you're going to bring up using brightness, contrast, or levels tools are going to be artifacts and not actual terrain features in this case.

[rigelan]

Of course there are random artifacts, but those artifacts should be generally random. If you do look at the image, there are areas of shade. There is the lighter black at the top, and the deeper black in the center. I would venture to say that those two specific areas generally describe the actual terrain.

But you are right, specific single blocks of color do not a rock make.

And it would be great to get an original image to do that with. I would assume that the one put up on APOD were web-optimized first, and probably less useful than the original in determining the shading of the terrain.