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From: doug@escher.UUCP (Douglas J Freyburger)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re: Mars rumor
Message-ID: <31@escher.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 5-Jun-85 18:13:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: escher.31
Posted: Wed Jun  5 18:13:34 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Jun-85 06:13:55 EDT
References: <2018@mordor.UUCP>
Organization: NASA/JPL, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 29

> From: Robert.Aarhus@CMU-CS-SPICE
> 	At a national Metallurgical Science convention, it was
> 	announced that photographs from the Viking lander revealed
> 	what appeared to be a pyramidal rock formation with "a
> 	face on it" (this is where I became *real* skeptical);
> 
> 	Now a rock formation, perhaps, but a Pyramid with a face?
> 	Does anyone know if this thing has been observed (maybe just
> 	a photographic artifact?), and if so, why the media hasn't

	A couple months ago, the JPL employee's newssheet
"The JPL Universe" had a pictorial of several photos like
that.  A lunar crater with a smiley face, a little Mars
mountain with an ice-hockey goalie mask, cracks in Ganymede
shaped like a mouse, etc.  There were about a dozen all
told, and some had to be explained before you got the joke.
The best part of the Martian face is that one of the "eyes"
was a pixel drop-out during transmission, and the other was
a fairly recent crater.  Computer image enhancement had
sharpened one, and blurred the other.  The algorthyms do
that to bit drop-outs usually.

	The claim of a "Great Pyramid" is one I haven't
heard about yet, though.  Sounds like fun.  Let's go play
Napolean, and strip off the top layer of limestone as
convient building material for our colonies housing!

DOUG@JPL-VLSI, doug@aerospace, ...!trwrb!escher!doug, etc.
Douglas J Freyburger, JPL 171-243, Pasadena, CA 91109