Why are Mars photos of martian sky red if there is no atmosphere?
Dec.17, 2010 in
Martian Pix
Question by ἀντί χριστος: Why are Mars photos of martian sky red if there is no atmosphere?
I had a hunch that Mars images were red-shifted so I used a photo editor on one of the images for automatic correction and it made the sky blue and the ground brown, just like on Earth. So I began looking and found something that confirms that I’m not the first person to notice this… What’s going on here???
http://www.goroadachi.com/etemenanki/mars-hiddencolors.htm
In another question about trees on Mars, every person replied with there is no atmosphere on Mars. Now all of you say there is…. Which is it?
Best answer:
Answer by phatso
hah!
this is great
What do you think? Answer below!
December 17th, 2010 at 6:39 am
There is atmosphere in Mars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mars
December 17th, 2010 at 7:28 am
another conspiracy pile….. sigh…..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mars
there IS an atmosphere…. it’s composition makes it unbreathable….. it has winds and dust devils….. sand storms… all those must have an atmosphere….. the air there can hold up tiny dust particles which make the red color more or less obvious depending on how much is suspended there….. that dipwad on the website is the one doing the ‘adjustments’ to the pictures…… what a buncha dooey….. NASA adjusts to make things clearer… this lump only wants to muddy the waters…..
oooooooh, wow….. photoshop makes the pictures look different…. oooooooooh wow…………………..
December 17th, 2010 at 7:30 am
Mars does have an atmosphere. The Martian daytime sky is generally a butterscotch (yellow/brown) color. We know this from properly color-balanced pictures taken by the Viking landers in 1976 and Mars Pathfinder in 1997. The sky is not blue as on Earth because Martian air is extremely thin and the mineral “limonite” (a brown iron oxide, the same mineral that forms most of the Martian surface) dust particles in the air are large relative to the wavelength of visible light. The reddish particles preferentially absorb blue light and effectively act as mirrors by scattering the remaining wavelengths.
December 17th, 2010 at 7:43 am
mars does in fact have an atmosphere. its not very thick.. its about 1/100 thick as earth’s but alas it does have an atmosphere. the only way the planet would have carbon dioxide on it is if it has an atmosphere.
December 17th, 2010 at 8:15 am
I just want to back up “In Science We Trust”.
Mars does have an atmosphere – but then under the regular rules of light scattering, we’d expect the sky to be blue!
(the reasons why have been answered on this site many times).
However, the dust particles (which may be limonite or possibly magnetite) have an interesting effect. They remove the blue light! So the sky looks butterscotch (tan) in color.
Another interesting effect is that the optical propoerties of these particles also tend to make sunsets blue instead of red!
You should also know that photos from various space probes to Mars have been misinterpreted in the past, even my NASA.
Check out:
http://www.donaldedavis.com/PARTS/MARSCLRS.html
ADDED: I didn;t see the question about trees – so not sure what to say. Mars definitely has an atmosphere. It is most made up of CO2 and is significantly less dense (lower Pressure) than Earth’s. Trees are unlikely to survive for several reasons: 1. It’s too cold (water is in ice form, not so good for plants); 2. Mar’s doesn;t have an ozone layer or a strong magnetic field, so both high energy radiation and cosmic particles can penetrate to the surface, which is not good for life.
Finally – most of the people who answer questions on this site have no qualifications in the subjects they pontificate on. Many answers are excellent even from “unqualified” answerers. And many answers are completely wrong in so many ways it makes me mad. Ho hum