Sunday, December 03, 2006

MARS: VACATION PARADISE [Dedicated to Bill Compton]


Photo enhancement by "Stormin' Norman" Brydon - Surfing The Apocalypse, website.

Click the headline to be taken to the HIRISE website at the University of Arizona and a bunch of supposedly hi-res photos of the surface of Mars. No faces on Mars, sorry. Conspicuously, no ruined cities, no broken alien machinery or even seashells but heck, when you buy a postcard at the museum you don't get to see ALL the photos the photographer took.... right?

You CAN play with these images by zooming in, resizing and playing with the colorations - keeping in mind that the colors are only close guesses under weaker light and strange climate conditions. The image of "water" flowing into a "river" pictured above for instance MAY or MAY NOT have a green effect around it. Few melting glaciers on Earth, do either.

Google Earth has a new challenge.

Ronco

2 comments:

Tom Wright said...

Of course the "flowing" appearance could also represent wind-blown sand. Or volcanic ash (think Mt. St. Helens on a vast scale). Or lava (the fluid, flowing type like you see in Hawaii, not the blocky, chunky stuff we see here in the Southwest). Or perhaps vast lakes and rivers of molton Crayola crayons, which would help explain the colors.

freespeak@gmail.com said...

With just a little more Mescaline under me, Tom, I would be willing to suggest this was a Google Earth close-up of a 15-foot spread of the south end of Sky Harbor airport during a rainstorm. But then, I don't have enough Mescaline in me right now to blame that on.

*sigh* Maybe Sandy Claws will bring me some for Christmas. It is SO much easier when you can make it up as you go along.

I appreciate your scientific scepticism, though. Where there is scepticism, there is wonder.

Wonder makes you a beautiful child of God.