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January 19, 2005
NASA email from Curt Niebur
From : Curt Niebur
Sent : Wednesday, January 19, 2005
To : Peter Arvo
Subject : Fwd: Mars Opportunity images - Question
Mr. Arvo,
Your message below was forwarded to me for response.
The anomaly you spotted appears to be a speck of dust that was temporarily located on or just in front of the left Navcam. It is not present in the right Navcam frame collected at about the same time, and is not present in images taken by either the left or right Navcam a couple of minutes before and after. Mars is a pretty dusty and windy place. I would imagine that the wind blew a speck of dust onto the lens and then subsequently blew it off. We see the same thing happening to the solar array: it gets dusty and produces less power, but a dust devil sweeps by every now and then and blows the dust off, allowing the rover to get more power.
Thank you for your interest in the mission!
Curt Niebur
---------------
When or if I get his response I will append his response here, and will add updated to the title of this message...
Posted by Peter at 12:19 PM | Comments (2)
2nd Anomalous Image Found!
We have not been able to find out who found this second anomaly at this time.
http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/all/2/n/094/2N134687551ESF2700P1962L0M1.HTML
This anomaly is located in the upper left of the image.
Posted by Peter at 12:07 PM | Comments (0)
January 12, 2005
NASA/JPL Communication
NASA/JPL Communication - Day 1
First Phone Call:
I left a voicemail message for Guy Webster at NASA’s JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), and he promptly called me back about half an hour later.
I asked him if he knew where I might obtain information on the equipment used, for the navigation cameras, on the rover opportunity. He told me that if I send him an email that he would forward me a PDF file with the information that I wanted. He also told me that if this did not answer my questions, that he could forward what I was looking for to one of the engineers who had worked on assembling the camera system. This concluded our conversation.
Second Phone Call:
I left a message for and was promptly called back by Henry Kline of NASA’s JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory).
Henry was kind enough to chat with me for several minutes about trying to obtain a higher resolution image that has the anomaly on it. He asked me if I had tried to zoom in on the anomaly yet, and before I could answer he said that he would try since he had Adobe Photoshop on his computer (it did not occur to me until after I hung up the phone why Henry dealing with the raw images from the rovers would need sophisticated photo editing software). He said after zooming in on it with Photoshop that it was still blurry when zoomed in. He told me that he did not think that it was what we had all hoped it was, and that he thought that it may just be some dirt on the lens.
I also asked Henry if he knew who Jim Erickson was and if the press statement he made was true about “someone or something cleaning off the rover at night”. He said he did know who Jim Erickson was, but had not heard about that news article, and that I could contact Guy Webster about it. I told Henry that I had just got off the phone with Guy Webster and I would email him about it.
The phone conversation ended with Henry stating that if I came up with any other information on this topic that he would like to know about it.
Henry
I must say that the people at JPL were much more helpful than I thought that they would have been, and spent a good amount of time talking with me during their working hours (I phoned them after 6pm my time, so it was 3:00pm California time).
NASA/JPL Communication - Day 2
Email response from Guy Webster is as follows:
From : Guy Webster
Sent : Tuesday, January 11, 2005
To : Peter Arvo
Subject : Re: Mars Rover Camera PDF
Peter,
Here is that article about the navigation cameras and other engineering cameras. It ran in the Dec. 2003 issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research (Planets).
I did not hear or tape Jim Erickson's interview by the reporter for the New Scientist. The quote sounds like something he might have said, but the Reuters article may give an impression of more "mystery" than he or other engineers on the project would consider appropriate. The uncertainty is which of two good possibilities -- ether wind blowing off some dust or frost causing dust to clump up -- let the solar panels start getting more sunshine. There's a little more info about that in an October press release at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2004-261 .
-- Guy
Posted by Peter at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)
January 11, 2005
Image Professionals Respond to Mars Rover(Part2)
Jeffery Sainio - Staff Photoanalyst for MUFON responds:
I sent an email to Jeffery Sainio who is the Staff Photoanalyst for MUFON. The following are his responses and my question. I would also like to thank Jeffery for spending the time in analyzing this NASA image. It is much appreciated!
From : Jeffrey Sainio
Sent : Monday, January 10, 2005
To : Peter Arvo
Subject : Re: Mars Rover Image
Gee,whatever it is, it's guaranteed extraterrestrial... and not a bird, insect, or airplane.
The anomalous streak is not verified by the right camera of the stereo pair, which suggests a check of equipment malfunction is in order. The darkest point of the streak has a greyscale value of 8, while an adjacent pixel is 222, typical sky brightness. I could find no other such contrast (i.e. near-black adjacent to near-white) anywhere in the photo. Such failure to discover such contrast is hardly unexpected,
since focus is never perfect. Borders between known dark and light edges, such as the horizon, or nearby bright rocks, are spread out over 3 or 4 pixels. This extraordinary contrast indicates the image was not created by light passing through the lens, since the lens is incapable of creating such an image. Some other cause is probable. I'm no expert on the electronics of these imagers, and detailed knowledge is needed to know all their oddities. As an example of other defects, note the unfocused test image in the link below, and also the half-dozen specks which cannot be 'real' objects: >
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/p/318/1P156413415EDN3940P2697L7M1.HTML
From : Peter Arvo
Sent : Monday, January 10, 2005
To : Jeffrey Sainio
Subject : Re: Mars Rover Image
Jeffery,
Thank you very much for your input it is greatly appreciated.
I did talk with several individuals at NASA and JPL and they tell me that their guess is dirt on the lens. They are going to email me a white paper with the technical specifics of the navigation rover cameras, so that I can look into this further.
It's my understanding that you believe that it is most likely a data error while taking the photo, or that the error occurred in transmission. Correct?
Also, is it ok if I publish your comments to the Internet?
Thank you again for your time.
Peter Arvo
From : Jeffrey Sainio
Sent : Tuesday, January 11, 2005
To : Peter Arvo
Subject : Re: Mars Rover Image
Obviously, they know more about their lenses than I do, but...
This explanation begs the question of where the dirt went for the next photo. I suppose it COULD have been blown off by the same wind that put it there. The 'dust' would have to be fibrous, not a pointlike object such as a tiny sand grain. Of course, Opportunity just
visited its busted-up heatshield which may have released such fibers.
Typically, the surface of the lens package is extremely OUT of focus. I'd challenge anybody to focus their camera at a distant object, stick their thumb on the lens, and see a focused thumbprint. In this situation, the anomalous image is extremely IN focus. The theory contradicts the data. There are other locations within a complex lens system which are also focus planes. These locations are typically internal, sealed and inaccessible to dust. I can't be certain
without lens data. I don't believe another focal-plane can exist without an intervening lens, but those guys at NASA might know something I don't.
My best guess is a data error, possibly caused by a physical event such as a cosmic-ray hit(atmosphere isn't very helpful in blocking them) on the imaging CCD or whatnot; most data errors at locations other than the CCD would cause vertical or horizontal defects.
Regarding transmission errors, again I'm no expert on their transmission protocol, but typically there is error checking & correction of each stage of data transfer. A corrupted transmission
would be tossed out, possibly causing the black squares frequently seen in these images.
You are welcome to use my comments elsewhere. I'd appreciate if you'd point out that I'm the Staff Photoanalyst for MUFON, and that my expertise is primarily terrestrial. These rovers are a far cry from the home-electronics systems that I've become familiar with, and there are certainly better experts (somewhere) than I. BUT if you're told this is dirt on the lens, with no explanation of why such dirt would be in perfect focus, you haven't found an expert.
______
Posted by Peter at 12:54 PM | Comments (1)
Image Professionals Respond to Mars Rover(Part1)
Mark Carlotto responds:
JPEG compresses 8 x 8 pixel blocks of the image. You can see this if you zoom up on and enhance low contrast portions of the image. The object looks like it is a little bigger than 8 pixels, and so it occurs in two adjacent compression blocks. Although it is possible for noise to corrupt one block it is unlikely that it would affect two adjacent blocks. So I'd say that it's probably not a compression artifact.
Posted by Peter at 12:47 PM | Comments (0)
January 07, 2005
Anomaly in Mars Rover Image (Update NASA Link)
The below is the direct link to the anomalous image on NASA's site.
This leads more evidence that this may in fact be a UFO.
Stay tuned.
Posted by Peter at 05:31 PM | Comments (1)
Anomaly in Mars Rover Image (Update)
The below is the response that I received, about the anomaly, from Whitley Strieber:
"Sent : Friday, January 7, 2005 12:45 PM
Subject : Re: Mars Rover Opportunity - Anomalous Image
This is most interesting. Because it is airborne, it
cannot be claimed that it's rover debris. Because of
the way the light falls on it, consistent with the
position of the sun, it is unlikely to be an
instrument artifact.
Thanks for this.
Whitley Strieber"
I also received the following response from Mark Olson:
"I asked a friend of mine who has been doing videography for 20 years now what he thought of it and he said it is not a video artifact as that would show up in the frames before and after, so it's not something on the lens. You just might have something my friend.
Mark"
Stay tuned as I make my inquiry to NASA.
I'm not sure if they will respond or not, but it is always worth a try...
Posted by Peter at 05:11 PM | Comments (0)
January 05, 2005
New Earth Quake Predicted for March 2005
Possibly another 9 or greater earth quake will happen somewhere in the ocean this March 2005.
If this event occurs, the cause was advanced beings (ABs) tampering with things.
If this story proves to be true, stay tuned for the next update from my source...
Also take notice Earth's spin changed before the quake occured. The same strange effect occured in the Alaska quake of 1964.
Posted by Peter at 04:56 PM | Comments (0)
Anomaly in Mars Rover Image
While looking into one crash image sent to me by a contact of mine I ran across an anomalous object which can be viewed by clicking the included link below.
The anomaly is located in the upper right portion of the sky. This may turn out to only be something on the camera lens, but it does not appear that this object is one the lens. I have tried to zoom in on it as much as possible and have not found any tampering. Someone will need to look into this further to be able to tell for certain.
Posted by Peter at 04:55 PM | Comments (0)