COSMIC SECRETS
The Enigmas on Mars 58
Spirit Rover
Descent from the Summit of 'Husband Hill'
13-Dec-2005
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Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell
 
Descent from the Summit of 'Husband Hill'
Image ID: Seminole_L257atc-A677R1
Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell
Browse Image | Medium Image (226 kB) | Large (60 MB)
 
In late November 2005 while descending "Husband Hill," NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit took the most detailed panorama so far of the "Inner Basin," the rover's next target destination. Spirit acquired the 405 individual images that make up this 360-degree view of the surrounding terrain using five different filters on the panoramic camera. The rover took the images on Martian days, or sols, 672 to 677 (Nov. 23 to 28, 2005 -- the Thanksgiving holiday weekend).

This image is an approximately true-color rendering using camera's 750-, 530-, and 430-nanometer filters. Seams between individual frames have been eliminated from the sky portion of the mosaic to better simulate the vista a person standing on Mars would see.

"Home Plate," a bright, semi-circular feature scientists hope to investigate, is harder to discern in this image than in earlier views taken from higher up the hill. Spirit acquired this more oblique view, known as the "Seminole panorama," from about halfway down the south flank of Husband Hill, 50 meters (164 feet) or so below the summit. Near the center of the panorama, on the horizon, are "McCool Hill" and "Ramon Hill," named, like Husband Hill, in honor of the fallen astronauts of the space shuttle Columbia. Husband Hill is visible behind the rover, on the right and left sides of the panorama. An arc of rover tracks made while avoiding obstacles and getting into position to examine rock outcrops can be traced over a long distance by zooming in to explore the panorama in greater detail.

Spirit is now significantly farther downhill toward the center of this panorama, en route to Home Plate and other enigmatic soils and outcrop rocks in the quest to uncover the history of Gusev Crater and the "Columbia Hills."

SOURCE: NASA/JPL/Cornell 

Exuberant's Files
Green Fog
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Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell
The Image above is clipped from the original full size (60 MB) image with no adjustment in size color or contrast. Just over the hill you can see a greenish fog on the valley floor. This image according to NASA is in true color. The source files are linked above in the article. The fog was first spotted by Exhuberant1's brother and brought to Pegasus. He also sent a copy to Mike Singh for his opinion. [see below]
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Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell
This is a closeup taken from the high res copy of the area showing the 'fog'

Mike Singh's Collection
(Edited by Pegasus)
Green Fog
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Credit: Mike Singh

Sent:  8-9-2009 at 04:02 AM

 "Here's the true color of that image posted above. Note the greens and blues - moss, lichen, grass....? And what looks like a lake in the distance! By the way, NO coloring whatsoever has been superimposed on this image. Just reducing NASA's horrific amount of saturation!!"

-Mike Singh 
ArMaP's Collection
(Edited by Pegasus)
Green Fog
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Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell

Posted by ArMaP, on September 9, 2009 at 19:56 GMT ATS Post ID 7065192

OK, let's see if with some pictures I can explain better what I said before.

These are the photos used to create the colour version of that image.

For the red channel...

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Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornel

For the green channel, taken 143 seconds after.

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Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornel

For the blue channel, taken 135 seconds after the previous photo and 278 seconds after the first.

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Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornel

(All images are bigger than they appear here, click for full size)

In the first (red) photo there is nothing visible on that area where we can see the green dust (or whatever), but in the second photo (green) we can see what looks like a wide dust-devil. In the third photo we can see that the dust-devil has moved to the left, and looks fainter than in the previous photo, so it was probably loosing energy and disappearing at the time.

As anyone that knows how these RGB images are created knows, something that appears only in one of the images will appear in the final image as being of the colour for the channel in which the object was visible, so the joining of these three images should show a green dust-devil at the middle of the image and a fainter blue dust-devil to the left, and that is what we see.

This is the final result of using the above images to make a colour version. [see first colour image above]

Although faint, it's visible that there is a blue "mist" to the left of the green "swamp gas", as predicted by what was visible on the greyscale images.

That is why I think that this is really an image artefact and not a green dust, mist or gas, it's just the result of how these images are made.

PS: yes, that's a blue sky, before someone asks. :D
These are the radiometrically corrected images, they give much better looking results. 
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