CLOUDS OF ATMOSPHERIC MOISTURE
Report #040
July 6, 2002
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The above first image as well as the second and third images below show clouds to a greater extent and ground detail to a lesser extent. I have intentionally left off any imaging enhancements like sharpening because this would have put too much unnatural glare in the white cloud formations. So I have left the visual just as they are in the originals except for zoom to 135% and just a little added color that mostly helps the blurred ground detail but has little impact on the cloud visuals. I have also rotated the original strip 90º to maximize the amount of image strip detail I could get in my images.
I have a number of times thought that I had discovered clouds on Mars. Unfortunately, this was often associated with what looked like ground hugging clouds, fog, mist, smoke, etc. at or near ground level and which I suspected was confused with featureless image tampering and I never felt comfortable enough in reporting it. However, here in this report are unquestionably high atmospheric clouds in the M08-06569 strip not associated with or confused with any ground or near ground visual clutter. If this type of discovery or this strip has been reported by someone else, I'm and not aware of it and it therefore may be a first, at least with respect to its cloud clarity and being so unmistakably obvious.
This is a region on Mars that a number of the science data strips labels indicate as "dust devil" monitoring in the plains of Arcadia Planitia. This of course implies strong winds and dust but I suspect that this is mostly misdirection to get everyone thinking in terms of dry and dusty as opposed to damp and wet concepts. Likewise, I suspect officials intend to capitalize on that dry, dusty misdirection concept and identify these clouds as dust storms. All I can say is don't buy it even in the least. These are just what they look like, most definitely water vapor clouds.
Further, the cloud formations seen here in my first three images, as extracted from the narrow-angle M08-06569 strip, are only a tiny portion of a great mass of clouds you can see in the above M08-06570 companion wide-angle context strip. The many lighter colored spots are much larger cloud formations no doubt based on rising air thermals billowing out at the top and there is also evidence of evidence thinner wispy clouds such as in the M08-06569 strip. However, the slightly darker smooth foggy smudging is I suspect image tampering applications hiding something, probably on the ground below. So, just don't get confused about this and remember that you can't believe absolutely everything you see in this wide-angle strip. The point is though that the clouds seen in the narrow-angle strip presented here are only a tiny portion on the edge of a much larger region of much more intense cloud formations and represent a region wide event rather than some tiny insignificant atmospheric change.
If you ever closely examine the full narrow-angle strip and alternate zooming in and out and sharpening the strip to reveal the ground detail better, you will see that the mostly level plain terrain under the clouds is basically completely covered by something similar to what you see in the fifth image above. Since little to no true raw ground detail can be seen at all because of this dense coating of "something," at first I thought this covering may be distantly seen vegetation. Look closely and you'll see that the terrain appears to be covered by densely packed individual objects just beyond reasonable limits of resolution so that we can't determine what those objects in the merged jumbled mass are. However, I discovered that no matter how much I zoomed in or sharpened this scene, the only thing that began to resolve were individual pixels. The fact is that, no matter how natural this terrain appears, it is actually a coating of pixel level blur tampering mixed with offset overlapping pixels that alters whatever is under this to the vague indistinct look you see here. In my experience, tampering usually means civilization evidence. Regardless, whether natural growth of some kind or civilization evidence, this carpeting "something" definitely represents "life" of some kind.
Further, even though I have this particular image's file size reduced to a low level and as far as I can go for Web presentation without hurting the quality too much, it is still easily 2½ times the file size of any of the other images here and will be very slow to load. That can't be helped but what this tells me is that, while the visuals for us may just be rocky looking terrain by design, the PhotoShop software is seeing densely packed hard individual large objects down there in great massive numbers. Since I have taken many hundreds of images of Mars natural terrain including highly detailed terrain without such a great difference happening except in the presence of suspected buildings, this is a indicator that something else in great numbers other than what we are seeing is down there under those clouds and the tampering.
As for the clouds themselves, this type of tampering technique would have no visible impact on them. Think of it like this, if a single hard ground object basically filled a single pixel, then offsetting and overlapping pixels would destroying the integrity of that object visually. It would be even worse for objects large enough to fill multiple adjacent pixels. On the other hand, if it took millions cloud moisture molecules or droplets with high albedo to fill a single pixel view and all adjacent pixels had the same smooth appearance in them, the offset or overlapping technique would have no visible effect on the overall mass. The trick is to recognize the artificially manipulated illusion for what it is.
One final point I want to make on the water vapor clouds vs. wind blown dust and dust devils concepts is that this general Arcadia Planitia plains region demonstrates other evidences of water sources. Now I haven't seen bodies of water but I do see water spouts and geysers that are officially implied as being dust devils as well as a huge area of terrain similar to that in the above fifth image that is even more densely coated with "something." I'll be reporting on these shortly.
DOCUMENTATION
For checking behind me and confirming these discoveries, you will find the expanded documentation section attached separately HERE complete with the graphical Mars chart showing the physical location of this discovery in the planet's northern hemisphere, links to the science data at the three main MSSS, PDS, and USGS web sites, and a reduced size version of the whole strip with my cloud imaging evidence locations pointed out in it. Good luck.
, Investigator
