Don't even start:

but he can't back it up with 100 pages of equations and talk of "Nyquist thresholds" and "Fourier transforms". There is "right", and then there is "Right".

Yikes!

Acceptance of the "argument" over the "evidence" has been the game with Mars since dirt was new. Robert, you ask the right question: "Why does NASA always do this with Mars images?" It is nuts-making. I'm glad they are being called on it right out of the gate and that talented people like you and Nick are coming up with generally more accurate images (if not perfect ones) essentially immediately.

The "Mordor" images we're seeing look to me to be "colorized" black and white images, quick and dirty right out of Photoshop. The uniformity of the colorization is the clue. NASA uses "colorized" images all the time. They're not false color, they're not real color, they're just convenient colorizations, that basically anybody can come up with from any black and white image if they have appropriate software.

I note with more than a little interest that both Robert and Nick came up with blue-white sky images using RGB filters. This is clearly in error. All those arguments and papers and whatnot that insist the sky on Mars is Salmon Pink make it so. Thus, if the Mars Image Team came up with blue-white skies like you did, they had to fix it, didn't they?

And everyone knows the dust on Mars is red... well orange... well pink at least. Some may be yellow. But what to make of the material in Meridiani? This strange dust-like material is deep red in the early color versions out of NASA, but we see now it may be more accurately depicted as a dark blue-gray. We can't be sure yet, but the dark red of the early images could well be inaccurate.

Is it ash? Plenty of suggestions that it might be, but if it is, where is the source? All those little craters that may actually be vents, not impact structures? Maybe. Is there any sign of widespread vulcanism in the Meridiani region? If there is, it would be quite a discovery.

What other processes might produce a thick coating of some "heavy" dark powdery material like we see in Meridiani? A note: The surface appearance at the Opportunity site strongly resembles the orbital appearance of Meridiani -- the scale factor makes this resemblance kind of wonderful, and quite unlike the situation at other landing sites.

If the dark material is not ash, sand, or dust, what is it, and how can it be produced?

And the light-colored layered material. Is it really pink as we see in Nick's and Robert's images? If so, what the hell is it? Is it the same sort of material as the "white" caliche-like material at the Pathfinder landing site? Is it the same sort of material as "White Rock" and its many, many similar formations? At the Opportunity site, the light colored layered stuff is shattered and broken into good sized blocks -- by impact? -- in a way that suggests it is very brittle. We see signs of differential erosion on some of the exposed edges. The layers are not of uniform thickness nor hardness. There appears to be no erosion spoil at the site, or if there is, it is covered by the dark material.

In the case of "White Rock" the argument is made that there is little or no erosion spoil because the material disintegrates to dust as it erodes and the dust blows away. Is that what happens in Meridiani as well? Could there be other ways for erosive products to vanish?

Whatever the case, I don't doubt we'll a New New Mars Paradigm thanks to these landings, and won't it be fun!

Cheers, BRFelix