Fake Colorized Skies On Mars

Instead of simply assembling the color images, NASA is faking the color of the sky

Some months back, a number of journalists asked if NASA had been intentionally coloring the skies in the images of Mars. The issue was dismissed with a number of valid but perhaps not very convincing arguments- among them that "it is difficult to get the color just right- the imager filters do not correspond to the colors in human color vision". Part of the problem, however, was the use of filter L2, which is infrared, and not visible. It has the effect of making the image too red, as well as coloring the blue reference chips hot pink.

But now, after the discovery that some of the "raw" images have been edited (and poorly), I decided to look at the released images myself and see if there were any telltales of editing or colorizing. I found that they were just as poorly edited as the other images. In fact, the signs are clear enough that even a novice can find them.

Here is a perfect example of deliberate colorizing and therefore, misrepresentation of the facts. The original press release image is here at the NASA/JPL website and was released May 6th, 2004.

'Burns Cliff' Beckons

This approximate true-color image taken by the panoramic camera on the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity highlights a feature called "Burns Cliff" within the impact crater known as "Endurance." Scientists are eager to explore this layered ridge for clues to the red planet's past. The only problem is its location: Burns Cliff is a vertical drop, which poses an interesting challenge for rover planners. Burns Cliff was named after the late scientist Roger Burns, who was one of the first to correctly propose the importance of sulfate and jarosite to the study of Mars' geologic history.

This image is a portion of a larger mosaic taken with the panoramic camera's 480-, 530- and 750-nanometer filters on sols 97 and 98.

Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell

This is the original captioning from the image posted on the NASA/JPL site at this link

Let's start out by looking at the image and locating the original images from which it was assembled. I saw the first clue immediately when I looked at this "sky" under magnification. This is a "press release image" labeled "burns_copy-B133R1.jpg" from the NASA/JPL rover page. The sky is a muddy brown color and shows a very flat, uniform field. Also, the edges of the horizon are blurry- unlike the images that we normally see.

I looked through the raw panoramic images until I located the original monochrome frames and filter data so that I could assemble the image from scratch and see how it turns out. According to the NASA site, the images were taken on Sols 97 and 98. Here are the images that I found that correspond to this data.

Using these three raw images (exactly the same ones NASA used), I assembled the color image below using the following parameters: red level, 100%, green level, 60%, blue level 30%. Then I brought up the brightness and contrast by 65% and dropped the saturation by 30%. Here is the resulting image.

Using the exact same filters and the same starting image data, this is the color picture that emerges if you use the same simple rules that the color calibration targets dictate. NASA could have made this image in literally seconds by batch process or no more than two minutes manually. Why did they go to the trouble of outlining the sky and coloring brown over it?