This Mars image looks unreal, and it’s kind of – BGR

The image you see above is the surface of Mars. I know it’s hard to believe, since you normally see Mars in dusty, vague orange colors in photos taken by NASA’s Mars Rovers, but it’s true! This picture, on the other hand, has orange, white shades and a surprising amount of blue, but how can that be? Well, sit here, dear scientist, as we embark on a magical journey into the world of false color images.

What you see here is an image captured by NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbit. The spacecraft has been orbiting Mars for two decades and is now officially ‘the longest-running Mars spacecraft in history’, according to the space agency. It’s a lovely little spacecraft, but this image of Mars is not captured in color. Instead comes the color of an algorithm that assigns blue colors to colder temperatures and orange colors to warmer temperatures. It produces a very striking image, but not necessarily an accurate representation of what you would see if you looked at this place on Mars with your own eyes.

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The snapshot was taken near the north pole of Mars, known as the ice sheet. The data returned by the Odyssey orbit enables NASA scientists to do cool things with the image, including superimposing one type of image on another. In this case, it is a mixture of visible light (as we see with our eyes) and infrared image data with which NASA can “paint” the image in whatever way looks best.

In this case, the oranges of the dunes are warmer than the areas that have been carved out and are assigned with yellow and orange colors, while the cooler spots get blue hues. It gives the appearance of earth-like sand dunes covering an ice bed, when in fact the colors are not so bold. If you look at it from a spacecraft flying overhead, you will usually see only shades of gray, although the carved dunes will still be visible.

NASA explains in a blog post showcasing the image as part of a celebration of Odyssey’s 20th anniversary:

A sea of ​​dark dunes, formed by the wind in long lines, surrounds Mars’ northern polar cap and covers an area as large as Texas. In this false-colored image, areas with cooler temperatures are recorded in bluish hues, while warmer properties are depicted in yellow and oranges. Thus the dark, sun-warmed dunes glow with a golden color. This image covers an area of ​​30 kilometers wide.

Of course, it’s very cool to see such images, because it shows us a side of Mars that we do not see often, but it is important to keep your imagination grounded, as false color images do not always provide an accurate depiction of what really exist.

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