Image
PIA01236.gif as downloaded from the JPL web site.
On the night of April 6th, 1998, an enhanced version of the long-awaited image of the "Face on Mars" acquired by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor was released to the news media world-wide by the Public Information Office of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The image as first released is shown below. The JPL web page on which it first appeared is here.
Image
PIA01236.gif as downloaded from the JPL web site.
For quite understandable reasons, a typical headline for the newspaper articles accompanying this image was "NASA Erases the Face On Mars". That description of what occurred was all too close to being the literal truth. However, the Face was erased from this "enhancement, not from Mars, and not by NASA per se, but by persons unknown at the JPL Multimission Image Processing Laboratory.
I'm not totally certain of how this version of the Cydonia image came to be nicknamed the "Catbox" but, presumably it was because it looks more like the scratchings of a cat in a litter box than it does the 1.5 mile-long and 1000+ foot-high mesa-like formation that it is known to be from shadow length measurements on the original VIking image (Frame35A72).
The Catbox was produced at the expense of American taxpayers at JPL's state-of-the-art image processing facilities. Below is an enhancement of the raw MGS image done by VGL Laboratories' not-so-state-of-the-art facilities (my Macintosh PC and Photoshop software, both seriously out of date).
VGL enhancement
(raw image was first processed using a LISP program to remove some of the
vertical streaks caused by variations in the sensitivity of the MGS camera's
CCD elements and reduced to 17.3% to match the size of the "Catbox".
The Face appears narrower in the MGS image than in the VIking images because of the oblique camera angle at which the MGS image was made (45 degrees from the vertical). The Viking TV camera was looking almost straight down at the surface of the planet when images 35A72 and 70A13 were taken. A large part of the eastern (right) side of the face is hidden behind the central ridge in the MGS image. Unfortunately, it was the east side that was also hidden by shadow in both Viking images.
While my enhancement is by no means a professional job of image processing (see Mark Carlotto's work), it at least shows the Face for what it is, unlike the version that JPL first released to the media. The Catbox was the product of excessive filtering of the raw image, giving the Face a nearly-flat appearance (another nickname for the Catbox is the "Footprint"). Rather than removing or suppressing the vertical streaking , this artifact of the MGS camera was exaggerated, resulting in the broad light stripe running down the image's center. The effectiveness of such "enhancement" techniques is not limited to problematic extraterrestrial landforms; it can also be used to convert known artificial structures of impressive dimensions to mere footprints, as is shown for a large Indian ceremonial mound here.
The "Catbox" is undoubtedly the shoddiest piece of image processing work released in the 40-year history of the space program. Why did they do it? Unless JPL permitted complete incompetents to run loose in their lab, the only reasonable conclusion is that the MGS image was deliberately doctored for public consumption in order to kill public interest in the subject of planetary SETI in general and Cydonia in particular. The rapid and broad distribution of the Catbox to the media would seem to confirm that interpretation of events. It was displayed on CNN, in local newspapers, US News and World Report, Astronomy Magazine, and most shamefully, in Scientific American (June, 1998, page 18).
According to some apologists for the JPL, since the MGS image doesn't look like a Face - in their personal opinions - then it is irrelevant whether or not the Catbox was fraudulent. Such assertions are an affront to anyone who puts any faith in the process of scientific inquiry. Personal opinions can never justify sloppy and dishonest work. Whether or not the Face looks like a face in the MGS image, the fact remains that in the Catbox enhancement, the Face does not look like what it is as the MGS camera photographed it. And if its true appearance really is so unremarkable, why then were these unknown people at JPL so in fear of the public seeing it that they released the Catbox instead?
The Catbox was almost certainly a highly unethical (and highly successful) attempt to manipulate public opinion to serve someone's private agenda. It was, however, not a "cover-up" in the X-Files sense of the word. With sufficient influence over the news media, much can be very effectively hidden in full view. The raw image was promptly released by NASA as promised for anyone who wanted to look at it. My belief is that the motivation for this trickery was to reassert control over the MGS schedule of scientific experiements after "outsiders" prevailed upon NASA to image Cydonia ( Dr. Carl Pilcher of NASA very graciously agreed to this). Personally, I doubt very much that it had anything to do with preventing the public from seeing things "they aren't ready for."
A few publications that came out shortly after the Catbox was released did display a considerably better (but still inadequate) "orthorectified" version of the Face. But that was hardly sufficient to reverse the media stampede triggered by the Catbox. Journalists could not reasonably be expected to treat the subject seriously, regardless of what legitimate enhancements of the image might show short of unambiguous evidence that the Face was an artificial structure.
The evidence provided by even the best enhancements of the MGS image is far from unambiguous. The MGS image shows a mesa-like formation, but one that is extraordinarily regular and linear in outline for a true mesa, and the Face does still look like a face. While it is grotesque if it is really an intentional representation of a face, it is not the cartoonish parody suggested by the Catbox.
As described by Mark Carlotto, the "nose" ridge is symmetrically placed close to what would be the vertical center line of a face. As shown below, this ridge terminates above the "mouth" in two arching features suggesting nostrils, placed to either side of the vertical axis of symmetry. Also symmetrically placed about the vertical center line is an inverted "V" shaped depression suggesting a harelip. None of this was evident in the VIking images, so it is reasonable to conclude that the MGS image, despite its poor contrast, has provided additional evidence of facial features although they are more of a departure from human facial features than many expected.
MGS Face Image, 60% full size. Apparent facial features are outlined in blue on the version to the right as follows:
A. Left eye socket
B. Pupil or iris
C. Slope indicating a possible eye cavity on the mostly-hidden right side of the Face.
D. Arching ridges suggesting two nostrils and a septum.
E. Fissure or ravine suggesting a hare lip aligned with the "nostril" features above it.
At this point, the MGS image gives support to two possible conclusions about the Face:
Both possibilities justify additional imaging of the Face. Reparation to the long-term damage the Catbox affair could do to NASA's credibility may ultimately compel it. This public-relations stunt has won JPL a temporary reprieve from the importuning of troublesome eccentrics looking for artifacts on other planets, but we hope that the more reasonable policy makers of NASA will soon come to realize that the reprieve may have been purchased at a cost too high to pay in the damage done to the space agency's reputation for openness and scientific ethics. The Face was erased from the Catbox, but this monument to deception can never be erased from the public record.
VGL
NOTE: the VGL web site was started primarily to present images of the moon that we found interesting and unusual. However, our introduction to the supposedly improbable notion that there could be artificial structures on other worlds was by way of Cydonia. We've all been following the progress of the Mars Global Surveyor with keen interest. We may, therefore, publish web pages on other aspects of the MGS Cydonia images in the future as time and if we think we have something original to offer. The Face was not the only thing photographed by the MGS; there are other features, some of which were not even suspected based on the lower resolution Viking images, that were revealed by the MGS. Most of these features have already been extensively covered elsewhere on the Internet (and not covered at all, of course, in the conventional news media).
Lan Fleming