Photo from Viking Lander 2 shows late-winter frost on the ground on Mars around the lander. The view is southeast over the top of Lander 2, and shows patches of frost around dark rocks. The surface is reddish-brown; the dark rocks vary in size from 10 centimeters (four inches) to 76 centimeters (30 inches) in diameter. This picture was obtained September 25, 1977. The frost deposits were detected for the first time 12 Martian days (sols) earlier in a black-and-white image. Color differences between the white frost and the reddish soil confirm that we are observing frost. The Lander Imaging Team is trying to determine if frost deposits routinely form due to cold night temperatures, then disappear during the warmer daytime. Preliminary analysis, however, indicates the frost was on the ground for some time and is disappearing over many days. That suggests to scientists that the frost is not frozen carbon dioxide (dry ice) but is more likely a carbon dioxide clathrate (six parts water to one part carbon dioxide). Detailed studies of the frost formation and disappearance, in conjunction with temperature measurements from the lander’s meteorology experiment, should be able to confirm or deny that hypothesis, scientists say.
I used the original
22e169.blu,
22e169.grn and
22e169.red images from the
NASA Viking image archive, converted them to .png, manually removed the noise, merged them into one image and finally increased the brightness and contrast with 20. Except for the conversion, this was all done in Adobe Photoshop CS2. The original files by NASA are in the public domain, and so is this new one.
Other versions
I created this image as a replacement for the
Viking2-PIA00573.jpg. This file was created by NASA, but the quality is not very high. Using the original pictures from the Lander archive resulted in a higher quality image.
Licensing
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This work has been released into the public domain by its author, Van der Hoorn at
English Wikipedia. This applies worldwide. In some countries this may not be legally possible; if so: Van der Hoorn grants anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse
The image is based on original images from NASA to which the following copyright statement is applicable:
The NASA website hosts a large number of images from the
Soviet/
Russian space agency, and other non-American space agencies. These are not necessarily in the public domain.
The
SOHO (ESA & NASA) joint project implies that all materials created by its probe are copyrighted and require permission for commercial non-educational use.
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{{Information |Description = Original Caption Released with Image: Photo from Viking Lander 2 shows late-winter frost on the ground on Mars around the lander. The view is southeast over the top of Lander 2, and shows patches of frost around dark rocks. Th
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