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Those were so great, and used excellent photography and art. The authors included some big names.

The Moonrise of July 27th as the last rays of the Sun left the High Desert.

I agree that 'colonizing' Mars is a dead end idea. Some bases, sure. Numerous places there would be worth visiting and documenting as people with cameras can do. But if one wants to colonize space, the best places would be ready made large habitats existing apart away from big gravity wells.

Great article. Viking images were made to look for movement across the scene by repeatedly scanning a vertical line. Who is to say if professional caution ended up obscuring a momentous discovery? Until we have a chance to examine relevant samples returned from Mars only so much can be answered.

When the Viking landing sites were well photographed, maps of the surroundings could be compiled. I made a grayscale overview based on comparisons between the two camera panoramas, and with reference to sample field maps. A color oil painting of the lander was then done incorporating such work.

The surface and sky seems to be, assuming some distinctive handling of the scene by the camera, similar to the color range seen by the other color cameras brought there. Their choice of saturation is my main issue. I wish they published a well exposed photo of the rover color chart here and there.

BTW, I hate it when science data like this is restricted in distribution. Paywalls are a serious impediment to the public understanding and appreciation of science.

Very well, does this give you confidence in the camera's performance on Mars? The camera data is good, although the images appear overly saturated for natural color. Certainly the Chinese succeeding in their first time to Mars is a great addition to our collective experience on the Red Planet.

I have seen a similar effect in Egypt, which I captured in fisheye format. In the Black Rock Desert I also observed this hint of that effect as a dust storm intensified.

I would like to express my admiration of your planetary processing work, you are one of the luminaries in the field.

I presume you are referring to the presentations of H. I.. :-)

A few more Viking 1 Mars surface images. Vikings 1 & 2 yielded a variety and duration of observations that gave the first 'Ground Truth' about this intriguing neighbor world's surface and atmosphere. It's early digital camera design worked well with the brightness range of the surface details.

Ron Levin was yelled at by Jim Martin when as a 20 year old he began fiddling with the carefully adjusted RGB knobs of a high end monitor presenting the reddened adjustment of the first color photo. He made a 'splash' later on which with his appraisal of an Opportunity image I cite in the Alt text:

Beautiful image, almost 'painterly'.

I have noticed your way too blue Viking images on line since the 90s. You seem to be on a kind of unending crusade about the Martian sky being blue. If you think the Martian sky is blue despite all the spacecraft evidence to the contrary, as I have cited above in images and related papers, why?

I would place Olivier Goursac at the top of the list when it comes to the Viking color images. His work with that and later Mars surface missions earns his printed works a place on the shelves of any related library. The Unmannedspaceflight forum had lots of great related Mars image work by others.

He is one of the greats in presenting such images.

Nice! One Falcon 9 launch I saw from Joshua Tree left a wide red aurora like glow, which I have only seen once.

Your text quotation lists the various wavelengths of the filters. I remember the L4, (601nm) L5 (535)and L6 (482) filters being the ones I always looked for in the jpeg raw images downloads during the mission. I'm not sure we have any basis for disagreement.

Alright. I submitted the quote as a reference for my answer. They indeed had a green filter as cited, how the software dealt with the image data is of course another matter. Here is an RGB photo of the clean Opportunity sundial with color patches I prepared during the mission, showing the green.