Links of Interest

Mars

• NASA's Mars missions (has links to Odyssey, the rovers, Mars Express, MGS and others).
• Spirit and Opportunity
• An astonishing list of links about Mars features.

  Colors and Imaging

• An excellent essay on color in astronomical images
• Another essay, by my friend and expert astronomy image-putter-togetherer Zolt Levay.
• An essay from JPL about the colors of Mars
• A brilliant webpage called Top Story: NASA Is Not Altering Mars Colors.
• A discussion of Mars colors is ongoing on the Bad Astronomy Bulletin Board.
• Don Davis' excellent space art website

  Richard Hoagland and other Nonsense Peddlers

• Hoagland's loathsome Enterprise Mission website
• An interesting web page which purports to show how images on Hoagland's website were manipulated. In other words, someone took the raw THEMIS data and did some simple manipulations in Photoshop to produce "anomalies". The web page makes an excuse that Hoagland was hoaxed by someone else, but it does not preclude Hoagland having altered the images. And if he was hoaxed, why did he not go and find the raw images himself to check them?
• Another website claiming Hoagland is less than honest. This one is from someone I would characterize as a proponent of pseudoscience, so it's rather ironic seeing him go after Hoagland. The biggest irony on his page is the statement: "The big media in this country has [sic] always been skeptic-friendly..." Please, tell that to Montel Williams, Larry King (who both have had renowned "psychic" Sylvia Brown as a featured guest), the SciFi channel, and any station that has aired the garbage from James van Praagh and John Edward.
• Yet another site implying Hoagland has problems with the truth. This one tracks down one of Hoagland's claims about secret NASA image doctoring.

  The "Face"

• Gary Posner's full article about the "Face"
• A great site with links and images about the "Face"
• Martin Gardner's Skeptical Inquirer article about the "Face"
• Other people see faces in patterns, too.

  The Glass Worm

• The original Mars Orbiting Camera images of the region of the "glass worm".
• The MOC image of the Gorgonum Chaos region.
• Hoagland's page on the "glass worm"

  Various Sites Debunking Hoagland

• The dreaded Masons (Hoagland tries to tie NASA in with them) ridicule Hoagland here
• Gary Posner's devastating article, originally published in the CSICOP "Skeptical Inquirer" magazine, where he details some of Hoagland's "exaggerations".
• Hoagland's rebuttal to Posner.
• Mathematician Ralph Greenberg's thorough trashing of Hoagland's math about Cydonia
• An interesting discussion of some potential image hanky-panky perpetrated by Hoagland.
• Space historian and commentator James Oberg's interesting essay about fossils and Mars.

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