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This false-color view of Toro Crater on Mars was captured on Dec. 1, 2011, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and released on Wednesday. The different colors reflect different mineral composition on the Martian surface.
There's not much red in this picture of the Red Planet, produced by the high-resolution camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Browns and blues and greens and yellows and violets ... but red? Not so much. There's a method in this colorful madness: The riot of color tells scientists that, mineralogically speaking, this is a wildly diverse region of Mars.
The orbiter took this picture of Toro Crater in Mars' northern hemisphere back on Dec. 1, and the processed version was released just this week. The University of Arizona's Alfred McEwen, principal investigator for the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment or HiRISE, says the different colors point to different kinds of minerals that may have been altered through the action of liquid water and heat on ancient Mars.
HiRISE's views in different wavelengths can be tweaked to tell geologists things about surface composition that you might not notice in a "true color" photograph.
"In general, the blue and green colors indicate unaltered minerals like pyroxene and olivine, whereas the warmer colors indicate alteration into clays and other minerals," McEwen writes in his image advisory. "The linear north-south trending features are windblown dunes that are much younger than the bedrock."
Such hydrothermal alteration could get a closer examination elsewhere on Mars when NASA's Curiosity rover touches down in Gale Crater this August.
For more of this crazy imagery, check out this longer, higher-resolution view of the Toro Crater scene. If you've got red-blue glasses, you'll get a kick out of this 3-D version. The HiRISE home page will point you to thousands of pictures from Mars — some in true color, some in false color, some in black and white, and some in 3-D red and blue. Feel free to go crazy.
S. Robbins / Moon Mappers / CosmoQuest / NASA
This image of the moon shows craters that have been identified by citizen scientists as part of the Moon Mappers project. The blue circles indicate raw IDs by individual users, while the red circles indicate craters identified by a computer program that groups together individual markings.
Where in the Cosmos?
On the Cosmic Log Facebook page, we've been featuring a series called "Where in the Cosmos" — in which we put up a curious space picture for people to puzzle over. Last week, I posted a picture of some cratered terrain with red and blue circles all over it. It took less than 24 hours for Robert Dryden to figure out that the picture showed some of the first results from a citizen-science project called Moon Mappers.
Scientists have long studied craters on the moon to trace the evolution of the solar system. The distribution and estimated ages of lunar craters have led astronomers to conclude, for example, that the inner solar system weathered a hailstorm of impacts known as the "Late Heavy Bombardment" about 4 billion years ago.
Crater counting is a valuable exercise, but it's hard to automate. Moon Mappers, a project presented by the CosmoQuest website, is calling upon the wisdom of crowds to help scientists make sense out of the imagery being sent back to Earth by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Similar citizen-science projects, organized by Zooniverse, have yielded published research — and Moon Mappers is likely to be similarly productive. So if you want to take part in some real science, consider joining the Moon Mappers team.
The moon picture was doubly apt, because of the Moon Mappers angle as well as the past week's political debates over future moon missions. For the latest word in that debate, check out this commentary by NBC News' longtime Cape Canaveral correspondent, Jay Barbree.
I posted this week's "Where in the Cosmos" picture puzzle earlier today, and within an hour several Cosmic Log Facebookers figured out that it was a 3-D view of the Snowman crater chain on the asteroid Vesta, as seen by NASA's Dawn probe. This means that Jarin Udom, Joan Tweedell and Ryan Anthony Sebastian Carroll join Robert Dryden in the winner's circle. They're all eligible to receive 3-D glasses once I get their mailing addresses.
To get in on the next "Where in the Cosmos" puzzle, be sure to hit the "Like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page ... and if you're already a fan, thanks for being part of the community!
More fun with space pictures:
ESO / VISTA / J. Emerson / EPA
Gaze into the Helix Nebula's golden eye and see the other cosmic highlights of January 2012.
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.
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Wow..what a treat..thank you
Agreed.
Strange colors brought to you by false color? Seriously? Thats the stupidest excuse for a 'gee look at the special story' headline that I have seen. Heck, I can take a black and white photo from the 1950's and turn it into 'hey look at the funky colors' using photoshop too . . stupid.
@Comanche, so......you couldn't take the time to read the article? Or is it that you couldn't make the intuitive leap when you tried to apply the knowledge gleaned from it?
Perhaps you should try to understand first, before posting.
Mitchell
So you're intelligent enough to fly a plane, yet you cannot read? or just too impatient? False color imaging is a a useful tool for all sorts of geologists, and has been a staple in their "bag of tricks" for a long time now. Capt. Obvious strikes again.
From The BBC 2/6/2012: How Embarrassing.
We could do so much more if we cooperated with other nations.
This is sad.
They have to result to a false color view to generate interest in yet another of 6 trillion photos they have taken of this endless red desert planet - to charm people into supporting another dozen orbiters/rovers for more truckloads of redundant data. I vote for an end to the robotics and let's focus our resources to actually get some people there, how 'bout it?
James-1153270,
Let's just send you in a spacecraft to mars with plenty of food. I hear there's a Hooter at the base of Gale Crater. And do not worry about there being any radiation. Who needs that redudant data.
Howmanyfingers, I would rather go myself to get away from the other folks like James and Comanchepilot.
I think showing the various mineral distributions in different colors is a great idea. It shows flow patterns, and mineral types and stuff I dont even know about. What it means to me is you can find the places where the minerals you want to mine are located. Thats where we go. Set up some ore processing facilities, smelting and fabrication factories, make more factories, mine rare minerals, build a pyramid, build spaceships to throw out to the astroid belts, build stations out there, move on to the jovian system, get us off this rock!.
How beautiful space is as well as vast. Surely, we should give our Creator and Designer the honor He deserves. For, such beautiful sights that we have and it makes us happy.
Well spoken and I'd like to add "For, such beautiful sights that we have such that it makes ever amazed at the baffling complexity of the universe and makes us ask "What are we here?" ".
"Surely, we should give our Creator and Designer the honor He deserves."
And if indeed there is one, I will.
"For, such beautiful sights that we have and it makes us happy."
On the other hand, even if there is one, I don't have enough hubris to believe it was done just to please us...
Actually, you can thank whatever HUMAN made that false color image for the beauty.... just sayin...
It all looks gorgeous, but it gives me no hope of their being a creator who cares. So far we have found no heaven and no hell. If there is a creator, he/she certainly finds amusement while watching bickering self-righteous religions, religious wars, natural disasters, disease, and painful death...(after all god did kill all the dinosaurs, which was probably beautiful and fun to watch). Of course if you love god through catastrophe he will give you the hope of an afterlife, but he kindly won't tell you for certain if you'll make it there. What a good guy.
If there is a creator, he/she has long forgotten about us.
In all honesty, I cannot say for certain whether God is good or bad, or just indifferent (at least most of the time). But I do know there is Intelligent Design behind the existence of our Universe, because of the extremely complex set of mathematical formulas and laws which govern the existence of our Universe. And believe it or not, there is also a scientific basis for an afterlife as well. Our physical (or mechanical) bodies are actually gestational to our higher quantum mechanical (or so called "spiritual") bodies. When we die, these higher quantum mechanical (so called "spiritual") bodies are released, and we need scientific investigations to determine exactly what happens after this. There is plenty of opportunity to conduct these scientific investigations, since there are thousands of people crossing over the the other side every day. I personally hope one day soon we can develop the advanced communications technologies which are needed to actually talk to these dearly departed on the "other side", just like we now have the communications technologies to talk to people on the other side of our world. - Rick Carter
There certainly is no objective or empirical evidence to suggest that the Creator God of our Universe is a "perfect" God, since our telescopes and space probes have shown us that most of our Universe borders on a complete disaster out there. If the work of God (our Universe) is not perfect, then obviously God cannot be perfect either. ("For by their works you shall know them.") So if God is not perfect, then we certainly don't need a "perfect sacrifice" in the form of a "Savior and Redeemer" to supposedly restore us to relationship and fellowship with God. I have tried many times to explain where these dangerous terminal religious ("End Time") belief systems came from. I can only hope enough people in our world finally listen to me before it is too late. Mankind potentially has countless millions (even billions) of years of growth, development and expansion ahead of them, so long as they don't fall for these ET installed terminal religious belief systems. This is the real "Gospel" or "Good News". - Rick Carter
RickCarter ID is religion wrapped in an attempt to make it look like scientific. It has been debunked. As far as humans having million even billions of years.. well if we are around and I emphasize "If". If we last as long as the dinosaurs then that would be something.