NASA rover captures mysterious light on Mars

[kurup]

@kurup

Must be the light from some malu guy's torch who went for a walk ......

 

[OrionHunter]

A NASA camera on Mars has captured what appears to be an artificial light shining outward from the red planet's surface.

The photo was beamed from one of two NASA rovers back to Earth last week.

With the space agency yet to addresses the anomaly, space enthusiasts have been quick to share their take on the phenomenon with many claiming it as "proof" intelligent life exists on Mars.

Scott C. Warning, who runs a popular conspiracy-based website noted that the light shines upward, as if from the ground.

"This could indicate there is intelligent life below the ground and uses light as we do," Waring wrote on his website. "This is not a glare from the sun, nor is it an artefact of the photo process."

It's not the first time photos taken by the NASA rover have been used by UFO enthusiasts to claim "proof" of life on Mars.

In January, a mysterious rock shaped as a 'jelly doughnut' captivated the world with pundits claiming it was evidence that living organisms existed on the red planet.

Not so, revealed NASA, officially declaring that the 'jelly doughnut' rock to be just that, a rock.

Now explain this!!

This is just a 'dust devil' reflecting sunlight!

This is what a dust devil on Mars looks like, for those who don't know....

Dust devil imaged by NASA Mars rover

So I don't see why there's such excitement over a perfectly normal phenomenon!

 

[Levina]

Must be the light from some malu guy's torch who went for a walk ......

Ahhh I have heard of malayali on moon..but on mars is a first.

.

This is just a 'dust devil' reflecting sunlight!

What exactly is a dust devil???

 

[OrionHunter]

What exactly is a dust devil???

A dust devil is a whirlwind ranging from small (half a meter wide and a few meters tall) to large (more than 10 meters wide and more than 1000 meters tall). The primary vertical motion is upward.

Here is a dust devil on Earth...

And here's a dust devil on Mars....

 

[Levina]

And here's a dust devil on Mars....

 

[kurup]

Ahhh I have heard of malayali on moon..but on mars is a first.

View attachment 23934 .

We even have malayalee associations there .

 

[Indischer]

NASA can send a probe all the way to the moon, but cannot install a colour camera on that probe? Trolls!

 

[thesolar65]

No quote... no say...

OK from next time...Now say something!!

 

[atatwolf]

It is an alien having a BBQ with his family. Who doesn't like BBQ?

 

[Levina]

NASA can send a probe all the way to the moon, but cannot install a colour camera on that probe? Trolls!

B&W pics are just a way to fool us.

OK from next time...Now say something!

@SpArK
Say noohhh...talk..pack pack packaaakk

We even have malayalee associations there .

Machu awesome!!!

 

[kurup]

Machu awesome!!!

 

[Durrak]

Tom must be using his torch

 

[thesolar65]

Or may be light from the other Rover!!

 

[Levina]

To understand this article better pls visit the site and view the gif.Somehow I cant upload the gif using mobile

Curiosity photo: Light seen on Mars is a camera artifact, not a real one.


No, That’s NOT an Artificial Light on Mars
By Phil Plait


An alien beacon? A transdimensional portal to an alternate Universe? Or just a blip in a photo? You decide (but it's the last one). Click to enaresenate.
Photo by NASA/JPL-Caltech

Apparently April is the month to debunk astronomical foolishness, for I have yet another bit of space silliness to disassemble.

Yesterday, the Houston Chronicle ran a story showing a picture from the Mars Curiosity rover, which has been exploring the fourth rock from the Sun since August 2012. As the rover moves over the Martian surface it deploys an arsenal of tools to examine its environment.
That, of course, includes cameras. Many of the pictures are visually stunning, and some are plain old weird. After all,they’re shots of the landscape on an alien world!

But some folks take the word “alien” a bit too metaphorically. In the Chroniclearticle, the writer, Carol Christian, points out one particular picture (shown above) that depicts a spray of light that looks to be off in the distance. She wrote, “A NASA camera on Mars has captured what appears to be artificial light emanating outward from the planet's surface.”
Right, artificial. That’s the firstconclusion we should jump to. But then, instead of asking any of a dozen scientists or science journalists who might actually be able to supply an answer, she just quotes the site she got the image from: UFO Sightings Daily.*

Yes, you read that right. The Houston Chronicle is repeating a story they found on a UFO conspiracy site.

When I saw the picture, I knew right away it wasn’t from some artificial source. It wasn’t even really a light source on Mars! I’ve worked with astronomical cameras for many, many years, and we see little blips like this all the time. To make sure though, I asked my friend Emily Lakdawalla, who is also a planetary scientist and journalist. Her immediate response: cosmic ray.

Ah, of course. Cosmic rays are charged subatomic particles (like protons, electrons, and so on) zipping around in space. On Earth, our atmosphere absorbs them so they don’t have much of an effect on cameras down here. But if you put a telescope in space, they are bombarded by these little beasties. When a cosmic ray slams into the electronic detector in the camera, it deposits some energy in the pixel (or pixels) where it hits. These detectors are designed to detect energy from incoming light, and they can’t tell the difference between a cosmic ray hit and a photon coming from a distant star. All they do is register the energy (you can read a lot more about this on a page where I dismantled claims about Planet X).

And that’s what we have here. Curiosity was taking a picture of the Martian horizon, and during the time the picture was taken, a subatomic particle smacked into the camera, leaving behind its trail of energy. It’s a camera artifact, not a real one.

How can I know the light isn’t real, and is just inside the camera itself? Because the camera is the NAVCAM, which is actually two cameras, one on the right and one on the left. This provides a binocular view of the landscape, which can be used (just like our own eyes do) to determine distances to objects. At the same time NAVCAM RIGHT took the picture with the light in it, NAVCAM LEFTalso took a picture … and there’s no light. Here are both pictures so you can compare them:

Photo by NASA/JPL-Caltech

See? It’s in one camera’s picture but not the other, even though they were taken at the same time (on April 3, 2014, at 10:00:03 UTC).

To make this even more clear, I madean animated GIF of the two shots:


As you can see, the landscape shifts a bit due to the different perspectives of the two cameras. The light is in one shot, but not the other.

I’ll note we see this kind of thing all the time, including in Curiosity images.Here’s one over a rock, for example. It’s not hard to find more if you peruse the Curiosity raw images archive (or the Unmanned Spaceflight forum, where space aficionados post and discuss the latest images from various missions).


So that’s what we have here. It’s not some alien rave, or a stranded bug-eyed monster signaling for help, or other fanciful fiction. No, it’s far more mundane, merely the quantized energy deposited by a subatomic particle that was accelerated in the magnetic fields of an exploded star and traveled thousands of light years across the galaxy at nearly the speed of light to finally slam into an electronic camera mounted on a mobile nuclear-powered laser-eyed chemical laboratory humans sent to another planet.

Clearly, reality’s not cool enough. We need to add aliens to make this a story.

Sigh.

(My very sincere and very large thanks to Emily Lakdawalla for help on this.)

*Correction, April 8, 2014: This post originally misstated the name of the website UFO Sightings Daily.

PHIL PLAIT
Phil Plait writes Slate’s Bad Astronomy blog and is an astronomer, public speaker, science evangelizer, and author ofDeath from the Skies! P

 

[thesolar65]

To understand this article better pls visit the site and view the gif.Somehow I cant upload the gif using mobile

Curiosity photo: Light seen on Mars is a camera artifact, not a real one.


No, That’s NOT an Artificial Light on Mars
By Phil Plait


An alien beacon? A transdimensional portal to an alternate Universe? Or just a blip in a photo? You decide (but it's the last one). Click to enaresenate.
Photo by NASA/JPL-Caltech

Apparently April is the month to debunk astronomical foolishness, for I have yet another bit of space silliness to disassemble.

Yesterday, the Houston Chronicle ran a story showing a picture from the Mars Curiosity rover, which has been exploring the fourth rock from the Sun since August 2012. As the rover moves over the Martian surface it deploys an arsenal of tools to examine its environment.
That, of course, includes cameras. Many of the pictures are visually stunning, and some are plain old weird. After all,they’re shots of the landscape on an alien world!

But some folks take the word “alien” a bit too metaphorically. In the Chroniclearticle, the writer, Carol Christian, points out one particular picture (shown above) that depicts a spray of light that looks to be off in the distance. She wrote, “A NASA camera on Mars has captured what appears to be artificial light emanating outward from the planet's surface.”
Right, artificial. That’s the firstconclusion we should jump to. But then, instead of asking any of a dozen scientists or science journalists who might actually be able to supply an answer, she just quotes the site she got the image from: UFO Sightings Daily.*

Yes, you read that right. The Houston Chronicle is repeating a story they found on a UFO conspiracy site.

When I saw the picture, I knew right away it wasn’t from some artificial source. It wasn’t even really a light source on Mars! I’ve worked with astronomical cameras for many, many years, and we see little blips like this all the time. To make sure though, I asked my friend Emily Lakdawalla, who is also a planetary scientist and journalist. Her immediate response: cosmic ray.

Ah, of course. Cosmic rays are charged subatomic particles (like protons, electrons, and so on) zipping around in space. On Earth, our atmosphere absorbs them so they don’t have much of an effect on cameras down here. But if you put a telescope in space, they are bombarded by these little beasties. When a cosmic ray slams into the electronic detector in the camera, it deposits some energy in the pixel (or pixels) where it hits. These detectors are designed to detect energy from incoming light, and they can’t tell the difference between a cosmic ray hit and a photon coming from a distant star. All they do is register the energy (you can read a lot more about this on a page where I dismantled claims about Planet X).

And that’s what we have here. Curiosity was taking a picture of the Martian horizon, and during the time the picture was taken, a subatomic particle smacked into the camera, leaving behind its trail of energy. It’s a camera artifact, not a real one.

How can I know the light isn’t real, and is just inside the camera itself? Because the camera is the NAVCAM, which is actually two cameras, one on the right and one on the left. This provides a binocular view of the landscape, which can be used (just like our own eyes do) to determine distances to objects. At the same time NAVCAM RIGHT took the picture with the light in it, NAVCAM LEFTalso took a picture … and there’s no light. Here are both pictures so you can compare them:

Photo by NASA/JPL-Caltech

See? It’s in one camera’s picture but not the other, even though they were taken at the same time (on April 3, 2014, at 10:00:03 UTC).

To make this even more clear, I madean animated GIF of the two shots:


As you can see, the landscape shifts a bit due to the different perspectives of the two cameras. The light is in one shot, but not the other.

I’ll note we see this kind of thing all the time, including in Curiosity images.Here’s one over a rock, for example. It’s not hard to find more if you peruse the Curiosity raw images archive (or the Unmanned Spaceflight forum, where space aficionados post and discuss the latest images from various missions).


So that’s what we have here. It’s not some alien rave, or a stranded bug-eyed monster signaling for help, or other fanciful fiction. No, it’s far more mundane, merely the quantized energy deposited by a subatomic particle that was accelerated in the magnetic fields of an exploded star and traveled thousands of light years across the galaxy at nearly the speed of light to finally slam into an electronic camera mounted on a mobile nuclear-powered laser-eyed chemical laboratory humans sent to another planet.

Clearly, reality’s not cool enough. We need to add aliens to make this a story.

Sigh.

(My very sincere and very large thanks to Emily Lakdawalla for help on this.)

*Correction, April 8, 2014: This post originally misstated the name of the website UFO Sightings Daily.

PHIL PLAIT
Phil Plait writes Slate’s Bad Astronomy blog and is an astronomer, public speaker, science evangelizer, and author ofDeath from the Skies! P

Nice research and explanation!!