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| Mars ICC camera image on the left. IDC camera image on the right. |
Curious discrepancies in Mars NASA and JPL imagery.
I first started working with 3D computer generated illustrations on the Commodore Amiga in 1986. The first good rendering program was Sculpt 3D. The basic principle is to take a 3D object file, basically a geometric object made of polygons, attach textures, set up lighting and environmental features and select Render. Due to the technology at the time, I had to run my Amiga all night to get a simple rendering of basic objects. It was a fun and experimental method of artistic exploration that only the people at major studios could do at the time, making it’s way to the masses at home. It was art not made by hand—instead the computer did the drawing and painting.
Fast forward to 2019 and the CGI has gotten to the point of hyper-realism as seen in such films such as The Lord of Rings, Avatar, and a host of sci-fi films and TV shows. Having a background in photography and CGI I think I am well versed in spotting what is real and what is not. And much coming out of NASA and the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) of late is obviously, fake. Have you seen the NASA image of North America much larger than its actual size? Or of North America totally in green with no desert areas or snow capped mountains? It is out there. I fail to understand why, with the sophistication of cameras and software to transmit pictures back to earth, why they would resort to this fakery and fakery not well done either.
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| First image on InSight lander. |
A Case In Point
A case in point is the new images arriving from the InSight lander on Mars. The first image broadcast to the world came from the lander’s Instrument Context Camera (ICC). It was a muddy image, barely in focus with large spots on it described as dust. The color and lighting are awful. The horizon is distorted into a hoop by a fisheye lens. The is a hideous looking image, taken with an expensive digital imaging device that does not look as good as images made over a 100 years ago on Civil War battlefields. This did not prevent the crew at NASA from standing up and cheering just like their team had scored a touchdown in a game they have yet to win. Regardless, it looks like the only real image that is being transmitted back to earth from the InSight lander. (Notice that the ICC camera image features a blue sky.)
Of note: even the most recent images from the ICC still have the dust specs on the lens. They don’t have a method of cleaning them off?
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| InSight IDC image. Camera or CGI? |
Instrument Deployment Camera (IDC) to The Rescue
The IDC images are a radical improvement over the ICC images. The resolution, color and contrast look fantastic! No crazy distortion of the horizon and even more importantly, no dust spots on the lens.
Looking at them for a while I noticed something is not quite right. Quite simply, these IDC images do not have the look of photographs. They are too sharp. A real camera with the best sensor will never reproduce an image as sharp as the eye will. There is only so much resolving power between optics and a CDD sensor.
Another issue is the Depth of Field (DOF). All images are super sharp from foreground to background. When shooting wide open spaces, such as landscapes, this is not hard to do and only requires the proper aperture setting. In close up, or macro photography, aperture is set for the focal point of the image, but there will be some blur in background details. The IDC images are mostly of close ups of the various instruments and components of the lander. Yet the Martian background is not blurred.
The zone of sharpness is all over the place in these images. No blur anywhere. In actual photography, there is always a trade-off between brightness and shadow; between focus and blur. These pictures feature no trade-offs at all.
Why does the IDC camera always stay clean of dust? No spotty images ever. The poorer quality ICC camera stays filthy. And while on this matter, why is the overall hardware of the InSight lander so pristine? Mars is noted for having a dusty environment with its planet-wide dust storms. Not a spec of dust is to be seen on anything.
These pictures are billed as “raw” images. If so, where is the raw data? These images are missing both the meta data and IPC data. Meta data contains important shooting information such as ISO speed, shutter speed, aperture used, focal length of lens and so on. The IPC data is the color profile being used. Both are missing for both cameras. Why don’t they want us to know this?
Actually, a CGI rendering isn’t going to contain that data because the image is not being created in a camera.
So are the IDC images CGI renderings? They are too perfect, have too much detail, and are of a totally different quality than the fisheye ICC. In may ways they remind me of the European Space Agency images of Mars. Those pictures have the same exact lighting and contrast giving them a very flat, unnatural look. They look like radar scans compiled into a 3D source file and then rendered with texture mapping applied. Just take a look of the early photos of Mars and compare them to these new hybrid creations.
Even more telling is how close the still images look to the JPL animations and stills of the InSight spacecraft. Check them out on YouTube. It’s the same exact look. Same lighting, coloring, textures and no DOF blur.
An Example of NASA CGI
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| Global warming composite illustration. |
Here is an image I created in 2006 featuring a global warming theme. It is a composite image, the Earth from NASA (public domain) and the flame a photograph of mine.
Is the Earth a NASA image? Yes and no. The Earth looks real enough but is a NASA CGI construct. This is proven by the data set I had to render it. It came with a 3D object file of a sphere and several image maps. One map features the ocean and the land masses; the other map is the clouds. They are overlaid on the sphere and the image is rendered. I added the flame in Photoshop.
Nothing about the Earth is real. All artwork. Do you think NASA tells the public this? No.
Here is an image of Earth from Apollo 8 in December of 1968. This is a real photograph. This what the earth really looks like from space. Compare it to the fake Earth image from NASA above.
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| Earth as viewed from Apollo 8 |
Sources
InSight Raw Images
https://Mars.nasa.gov/insight/multimedia/raw-images/?order=sol+desc%2Cdate_taken+desc&per_page=50&page=0&mission=insight
Examples of faked space images
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/07/24/sorry-internet-some-of-your-favorite-space-pictures-are-fakes/#46177537437e
Images
