How I Did My Image Processing
Simple steps that will allow you to do it yourself and verify my findings
All the images of the Martian fossils and features are directly from the NASA/JPL image data. No additions or changes of any kind have been made. I start my image processing by downloading a picture from the NASA site at this link. This is the raw image homepage.
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example, let's pick an image from Opportunity. This is a raw image
from the NASA site. Sol 014 is one of the best places to start
because it has so many distinct organisms and the lighting and position of
the camera are not bad.
Here is a thumbnail of this particular image. The original is located at the NASA website at this address. |
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| We can see lots of details
but so far, nothing stands out that much. Each "spherule"
has unique characteristics, such as hand shaped markings or lemon-like
shapes, or grooves.
The largest one in the top center of the image looks sort of like Jupiter, with a large oval spot on it. We will concentrate on this particular object and see what details we can bring out. |
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| To start with, we
can see that the brightness and contrast are not very good. We might
be able to enhance this somewhat by simple adjustments.
By bringing the brightness up 35% and the contrast 40%, we can now see some changes in what we can make out. Interesting features are the mottled appearance of this spherule, the discovery of some sort of rounded feature on its underside, and the "helmet" shape of the thing to its right. In fact, there is an identical "helmet" to the lower left, as well as a flat disc shaped thing below the "Jupiter" spherule. |
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