Frequently Asked Questions

See also: NSSDC Mars FAQ and NSSDC CDROM FAQ.

Where can I find a picture of the "Face on Mars"?

The formation that looks like a face is in a tiny portion of images 035A72 and 070A13, but you won't be able to see them clearly in the 1/8 scale images available here. See the information and raw and processed images available at MSSS. The NSSDC Photo Gallery also has the raw images, enhanced images, and a blow-up of the "face".

Keep in mind that the human brain is hardwired to try to recognize shapes as human faces. It has been pointed out that the crater Galle, which is the size of a small country, looks like a happy face.

The next spacecraft to take a picture of this area returned much higher resolution, and it doesn't look at all like a face. See MOC pictures.

Where can I find images from Pathfinder, Sojourner, or MGS?

Not here. Check the Pathfinder web site.

Where can I get CDROMs with the images?

From NSSDC.

Raw images

Maps and other data products

How was the atlas generated?

By code written in Lisp, developed and run on a Symbolics Lisp Machine model UX1200S.The original sources of data are listed in the Acknowledgements . I made no attempt to make the code portable, since what's important is that the result be portable, and it would be administratively difficult to release the code anyway.

Can a larger area than 15x15 degrees be shown?

Yes, it would be easy to add, on request, any NxM arrangement of 5-degree map squares at the current resolution (16 pixels/degree).

The footprint image for the region I'm interested in is too small to distinguish the individual raw image footprints. Can it be made larger?

The sizes were chosen by the simple heuristic that at least 60% of the underlying surface should be unobscured by colored pixels. (I'm thinking of implementng a second heuristic, that the colored lines should not overwrite each other too much.) For any given area, it's easy to increase the resolution at which the footprint image is drawn. Just send me mail. If all of Mars were done at 16 or 32 pixels/degree, it would take up too many megabytes, but any individual area can be made larger.

What do the little icons mean?

incidence (sun) angle
emission (viewing) angle
north azimuth (rotation of image)
filter through which the image was taken
one per image, color-coded to footprint outlines above them.
For more information, see list of all parameters.

In Mac Mosaic, when I click on a button next to a CDROM icon,

it downloads the image, but then my Macintosh shows a text description of the image instead of displaying the image.

You need to tell Mosaic that PDS format is a kind of image format, not a kind of text format. Here's how to do that in Mac Mosaic.

In X Mosaic, when I click on a button next to a CDROM icon,

it downloads the image, but then it displays an small amount of garbage like "5" instead of displaying the image.

You need to tell Mosaic that PDS format is a kind of image format, not a kind of text format. Here's how to do that in X Mosaic. When configured right, it should say "Spawning external viewer."

Kanef@Ptolemy.ARC.NASA.gov