Cydonia Revisited

Someone recently posted a quote from the Sherlock Holmes character warning about theories without the facts, and how we often twist our facts to match our theories.  In the case of the "Face on Mars", nothing could better illustrate this effect.  When the Viking lander took the original picture in 1976, many were convinced they were looking at an artificial structure.

As a young teenager growing up loving science fiction, I also found the Viking image compelling, but remained unconvinced.  The image at the left is from 2001 and removed any doubt that the Viking image had merely been an amusing play on shadows and light.



Below is a comparison of the two images.  Although NASA had already shown many images of the area clearly showing a natural formation after 1975, they wisely decided to take a picture of the same area, in the same orientation and lighting to easily show the difference.