Part of the Cydonia region, taken by the Viking 1 orbiter and released by NASA/JPL on July 25, 1976 (north is to the upper right). The famous 'Face on Mars' is near the center at the top. I call this a form of divination or rock scrying -- looking at any object, and giving it meaning because it looks like something one can relate to. It's fun to do with clouds.
Some researchers believe the Face on Mars is aligned with the Sphinx on the Giza plateau, each having a giant pyramid nearby, though a pyramid on Mars is speculation. This theory goes along with an alien-human connection that allegedly linked Mars and Earth in the past. Keep an open mind, but doubtful. They say the geometry of the Face on Mars and its pyramid, (part of an ancient city complex), align with the Sphinx and Great Pyramid on Earth. The Pyramid and it's two adjacent pyramids, further align with the belt stars of Orion ... tales from Orion which goes to Osiris and Isis, and all the mythology of death and rebirth.
Richard C. Hoagland, among others, believe the "Face" to be evidence of a long-lost Martian civilization along with other features they believe are present, such as apparent pyramids, which they argue are part of a ruined city.
Image analysis of the original Viking images led a few researchers to suggest that the features of the "Face" might not be an accidental consequence of viewing conditions. While accepting the "Face" as a subject for scientific study, astronomer Carl Sagan criticized much of the speculation concerning it in an eponymous chapter of his book The Demon-Haunted World.
In one of the images taken by Viking 1 on July 25, 1976, a 2 km (1.2 miles) long Cydonian mesa, situated at 40.75¡ north latitude and 9.46¡ west longitude, had the appearance of a humanoid "Face on Mars". When the image was originally acquired, Viking chief scientist Gerry Soffen dismissed the "face" in image 35A72 as a "[trick] of light and shadow".
However, a second image, 70A13, also shows the "Face", and was acquired 35 Viking orbits later at a different sun-angle from the 35A72 image. This latter discovery was made independently by Vincent DiPietro and Gregory Molenaar, two computer engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. DiPietro and Molenaar discovered the two misfiled images, Viking frames 35A72 and 70A13, while searching through NASA archives.
Cydonia was first imaged in detail by the Viking 1 and Viking 2 orbiters. Eighteen images of the Cydonia region were taken by the orbiters, of which seven have resolutions better than 250 m/pixel (820 ft/pixel). The other eleven images have resolutions worse than 550 m/pixel (1800 ft/pixel) and are virtually useless for studying surface features.
Of the seven good images, the lighting and time at which two pairs of images were taken are so close as to reduce the number to five distinct images. The Mission to Mars: Viking Orbiter Images of Mars CD-ROM image numbers for these are: 35A72 (VO-1010), 70A13 (VO-1011), 561A25 (VO-1021), 673B56 & 673B54 (VO-1063), and 753A33 & 753A34 (VO-1028).[14] Parts of the region were subsequently imaged at far higher resolution by the Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Express and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter missions.
More than 20 years after the Viking 1 images were taken, a succession of spacecraft visited Mars and collected new data from the Cydonia region. These spacecraft have included NASA's Mars Global Surveyor (1997Ð2006) and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (2006-), and the European Space Agency's Mars Express probe (2003-).
In contrast to the relatively low resolution of the Viking images of Cydonia, these new platforms afford much improved resolution. For instance, the Mars Express images are at a resolution of 14 m/pixel (46 ft/pixel) or better. By combining data from the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on the Mars Express probe and the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) on board NASA's Mars Global Surveyor it has been possible to create a 3D representation of the "Face on Mars".
Today, the "Face" is generally accepted to be an optical illusion, an example of pareidolia. After analysis of the higher resolution Mars Global Surveyor data NASA stated that "a detailed analysis of multiple images of this feature reveals a natural looking Martian hill whose illusory face-like appearance depends on the viewing angle and angle of illumination". Similar optical illusions can be found in the geology of Earth; examples include the Old Man of the Mountain, the Pedra da G‡vea, the Old Man of Hoy and the Badlands Guardian.
Face on Mars Wikipedia
Face on Mars Google Videos
3D Face on Mars
NASA - April 21, 2007
Martian Face Turns Out to be a Rocky Mesa PhysOrg - August 2, 2010
Technology has advanced a considerable amount since the original photo was taken, though. Now NASA has released a new image of the area - one that shows quite clearly that what looks like a face in the 1976 image is really just a rocky mesa.
New Visage for Red Planet 'Face' BBC - September 22, 2006
Galle is a crater on Mars. It is located on the eastern rim of the huge impact basin Argyre Planitia. It is named after the astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle.
Galle is often known as the "happy face crater" because the illusion of a smiley is created by a semicircular mountain range and two smaller craters within the main crater. The formation was first photographed by Viking Orbiter 1.
As the smiley is a key motif in the comic book Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, the crater was used as a story location after the coincidence was noted by Gibbons. According to Gibbons, the similarity "was almost too good to be true. I worried that if we put it in, people would never believe it." The actual crater was visualized in the 2009 film adaptation of Watchmen.
A second "happy face crater", smaller than Galle and located at 45.1¡S, 55.0¡W in Nereidum Montes, was discovered by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on January 28, 2008.
Happy Face on Mars Exposed Space.com - April 12, 2006
Mars has a heart, for one. And then there's the mile-long translucent worm. The most famous example is the Face on Mars, the one that some people believe to be the construct of an intelligent civilization.
Less controversial is the Happy Face on Mars, first noted in NASA's Viking Orbiter mission. Nobody seriously thinks it's actually something that's been built. New photos would lay to rest any wild ideas along these lines. From straight overhead, the Happy Face resembles that ubiquitous yellow smiling sticker. But seen in a new perspective view by the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter, the smile is wiped from the landscape, becoming nothing more than a line of mountains.
The smiling mountains sit within the Galle Crater, a hole in the ground dug by a space rock and whose rim forms the outline of the face. It is located on the eastern rim of the Argyre Planitia impact basin. Galle is 143 miles (230 km) wide.The new images were released today. Spotting things that don't exist - on Mars or in clouds - is called pareidolia. A study last year found that humans are particularly susceptible to seeing human faces where there are none, because our knowledge of the human face is so ingrained in our brains.
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