Not to beat on this thing excessively, but I do get bothered by the consistency of "inability" to provide accurate color images of Mars. This has been going on for something like 30 years, and it's nonsense.

I just bought a collection of early "Astronomy" magazines, and I'm stunned at how easily and reasonably the globe and surface of Mars were depicted, pre Viking, whether photographically or artistically.

Ruddy tan surface, with grayish and white patches. Red and orange show up, but not universally. The sky is usually depicted in art as deep blue. But mention is made that the sky would only be seen that way on the clearest days, if then. Haze and dust were expected to make the near-horizon sky milky, masking blue except overhead. This is still a perfectly reasonable interpretation.

I've also been to Lowell Observatory (I think Lowell has long received a bad rap, BTW, for his observations were superb) and I was surprised to see how accurately he depicted color of Mars -- almost exactly what I see in the telescope whenever I look at Mars today, a pale, ruddy, mottled tan and grayish/brownish/blueish/green. Not the lurid red or fuscia so popular today. Certainly not the awful baby-puke yellow that was being bandied about for a while.

Robert Shepherd allows as how the problems of the past 30 years in accurately depicting the colors of Mars (despite all the best equipment in the world) may have to do with a failure to agree on what "white" should be on Mars. I think it is a good point, but after all these decades, wouldn't it make sense to AGREE (and explain) for crying out loud and get on with it?

Nick Hoffman offers the notion that misuse of images would result from an (accurate?) depiction of Mars color. I must confess I don't understand that fear. How did he put it?

---- "Look, the sky is Blue on Mars."

---- "If the sky is blue then Mars must be Earthlike."

---- "Mars has abundant liquid water and NASA is hiding it from us."

Who exactly does that? And what, precisely, does it matter?

If we take the position that accurate color images of Mars or other planets will be misinterpreted by some people (as if planetary scientists never misinterpreted anything!) and so accurate images should not be seen or made, then we have just declared that "science" is impossible in public and have just validated the "NASA is hiding stuff" conspiracy nuts. And we don't want to do that.

And then we get the sometimes fierce hostility or whining defensiveness from Malin, JPL, NASA et al about how gosh darned hard it is to do this sort of work, dontchaknow, and how according to this or that graph, this or that image (which looks like it was colorized by PhotoShop) IS "accurate" so stop saying that!

Then we see Robert Shepherd and Woodlock and others assembling very reasonable (though possibly not "perfect") color images, from available data, doing it relatively routinely, consistently, with little or no heartburn... (I may be overstating!) ... something that seems beyond the ability of the dozens of processing experts in the labs. Of course it is not beyond their ability! We've seen superb examples of what those experts can do. Those images seem few and far between, though.

I wish those experts would realize there is a real interest in Mars, and that it does not depend -- in any way -- on Mars being "earthlike." Nor does it depend on Mars being eerily alien. People are interested in Mars as it is. We're interested in learning as much as we can, and in understanding what the field is learning and speculating on. "Tell the truth and shame the Devil!"

Sorry to take up so much space.

Cheers, B R Felix