...make me leery of this story:

1) It's almost identical to the story told by Barry DeGregorio in Mars: The Living Planet"[?] about the first Viking Lander picture in 1976. In the Pathfinder version it's a reporter, in the Viking Version it's Dr. Levin's kid. Urban legend?

2) We can't assume that the picture of the monitor is representing true color. Photographing a monitor is awfully tricky, not least being color balance under ambient lighting. There's nothing else in the picture whose color we can compare; but inside the picture, I see a general "boost" of blue. Forget the sky, and look at the ground--the dark rocks have a bluish tinge. Also, there's a bluish tinge to the wndow title bar; odds favor it being standard GUI pale grey. Bottom line: An unnatural amount of blue in this image. Was the color shifted in the equipment at JPL, or by the camera that took the picture?

Caveat emptor.

--Robert