Starship Asterisk*

Ann wrote:This is a fascinating image, showing clear signs of a dried out rill. There is a sort of geometrical cracking in the ground which suggests, to me at least, once-moist ground cracking as it was drying out.

But the picture looks a little too close to home. The sky in the image is blue. In reality, the Martian sky is known to be a shade of pale ocher, due to all the microscopic grains of rust-colored sand suspended in the thin, storm-ridden atmosphere.

Ann

alex_ag wrote:Absolutely. Looks like official propaganda to indulge inhabited missions to planet mars. Mars sky is definitely not blue.

Ann wrote:... The sky in the image is blue. In reality, the Martian sky is known to be a shade of pale ocher, due to all the microscopic grains of rust-colored sand suspended in the thin, storm-ridden atmosphere.

Steve Dutch wrote:This business of "extending" missions is absurd. The policy should be that a mission lasts as long as the spacecraft is functional.

geckzilla wrote:

alex_ag wrote:Absolutely. Looks like official propaganda to indulge inhabited missions to planet mars. Mars sky is definitely not blue.

Brilliant! This is exactly why the sky ended up this color! Next, let's Photoshop some goats into the pictures. People will want to journey to Mars for sure, then!

Seriously, I never get over people arguing about what color Mars really is. It's like we've already gone and come back. I think these photos are closer to reality than whatever you're imagining. The sky is kind of a dull grey here and the sun fairly low on the horizon. The closer we look to it, the bluer the sky appears, exactly as previously celebrated: "Mars has blue sunsets! Holy crap!" (For some reason nobody questioned that when it went up on APOD.)

Steve Dutch wrote:This business of "extending" missions is absurd. The policy should be that a mission lasts as long as the spacecraft is functional.

geckzilla wrote:I think these photos are closer to reality than whatever you're imagining.

alex_ag wrote:

geckzilla wrote:

alex_ag wrote:Absolutely. Looks like official propaganda to indulge inhabited missions to planet mars. Mars sky is definitely not blue.

Brilliant! This is exactly why the sky ended up this color! Next, let's Photoshop some goats into the pictures. People will want to journey to Mars for sure, then!

Seriously, I never get over people arguing about what color Mars really is. It's like we've already gone and come back. I think these photos are closer to reality than whatever you're imagining. The sky is kind of a dull grey here and the sun fairly low on the horizon. The closer we look to it, the bluer the sky appears, exactly as previously celebrated: "Mars has blue sunsets! Holy crap!" (For some reason nobody questioned that when it went up on APOD.)

Oh yeah. For instance: http://www.universetoday.com/98521/huge ... curiosity/

Guest wrote: I did some reading from other sites on the NET and found that as a result of light scattering at sunrise and sunset, the sky on mars can take on a blueish grey hue... But when the sun is overhead, it takes on the traditional red-muddy color. Reference the differences between Rayleigh scattering and Mie scattering. See sites like: https://briankoberlein.com/2015/05/18/t ... s-one-sun/

Not A Crank wrote:

geckzilla wrote:

alex_ag wrote:Absolutely. Looks like official propaganda to indulge inhabited missions to planet mars. Mars sky is definitely not blue.

Asterhole wrote:... I'd be willing to bet Mars is now, has always been, and always will be sterile unless we humans introduced life of some sort from our planet...

Ann wrote:This is a fascinating image, showing clear signs of a dried out rill. There is a sort of geometrical cracking in the ground which suggests, to me at least, once-moist ground cracking as it was drying out.

Chris Peterson wrote:

geckzilla wrote:I think these photos are closer to reality than whatever you're imagining.

I agree. Images almost never capture what things actually look like. Our eyes automatically color balance everything to a sunlit-Earth norm. Images generally don't. The reference targets on the rover are neutral, which tells me this image has had its white balance set about right, and that means that what we're seeing here is probably pretty close to the visual appearance we'd get standing on Mars.

NASA has a limited budget. Decisions on ending missions have to be made, or new and better missions will be delayed, with the effect of less total science. This is called Management 101.

geckzilla wrote:

alex_ag wrote:Absolutely. Looks like official propaganda to indulge inhabited missions to planet mars. Mars sky is definitely not blue.

Brilliant! This is exactly why the sky ended up this color! Next, let's Photoshop some goats into the pictures. People will want to journey to Mars for sure, then!

Europeans became aware of Greenland's existence, probably in the early 10th century, when Gunnbjörn Ulfsson, sailing from Norway to Iceland, was blown off course by a storm, and happened to sight some islands off Greenland. During the 980s, explorers led by Erik the Red set out from Iceland and reached the southwest coast of Greenland, found the region uninhabited, and settled there. Eirik named the island Greenland (Grænland in Old Norse and modern Icelandic, Grønland in modern Danish and Norwegian) in effect as a marketing device. Both the Book of Icelanders (Íslendingabók, a medieval account of Icelandic history from the 12th century onward) and the Saga of Eric the Red (Eiríks saga rauða, a medieval account of his life and of the Norse settlement of Greenland) state "He named the land Greenland, saying that people would be eager to go there if it had a good name."

geckzilla wrote: ... Seriously, I never get over people arguing about what color Mars really is. It's like we've already gone and come back. I think these photos are closer to reality than whatever you're imagining.