The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) on the Mars Odyssey spacecraft has taken pictures of the Cydonia region of Mars, and they've been analyzed and released today.

If that looks like a face, then I look like Cindy Crawford.

It's very clear to me that it's just a hill with terraces. But I'm sure that the Face-on-Mars loons will persist, claiming that the photo was doctored, or they'll get out Photoshop and fill in the gaps, and claim that that was what it looked like prior to erosion. Or they'll just continue to live in denial and say it does so look like a face.

Its all a plot by Mossad! LOL!

I'd forgotten about the "face" on Mars.

Pattern recognition. We humans sometimes have too much of it. I can see all sorts of things in the clouds; that doesn't mean they are really there.

Glad to see this one finally being completely debunked. But I'd still like to see for myself... up close and personal. ;-)

Nice Blog :] I've just stumbled onto your site from Foxnews.com.

Nice article...one question: when are we actually *going* to Mars?

Is the current lull in space exploration just that, or did we just look at Apollo as a big waste of time/money?

The way I see it, technology has been riding the advances we made during those years, and has really progressed little in my eyes...

We should look at going to Mars not as a propsition in and of itself, but as a way to expirament with new technologies, and get them into our living rooms (and pockets!)

What is it with current NASA administration anyways? They're so afriad to make space travel 'cool' that it almost hurts. Open up space travel to tourists. Bring back the days when we looked up to our astronauts, as now they are nameless, faceless scientists.

The WWII generation went to the moon, no offense, but the baby boomers spent too much time smoking pot and protesting...what is *MY* generation going to do with its time on earth?

In other words: "where the hell is my flying car?" :]

Ms. Crawford, is that you...?

Myria

All this reminds me of a Texas Astronomical Society meeting I went to a few years back when I lived in Dallas. The main talk featured quite a bit of radar imagery of Venus from the Magellan spacecraft. One picture showed something that, once you noticed it, looked distractingly like a face; lots of people in the audience started muttering about it. The guy sitting next to me said, "It's the Face on Venus!" I don't think we'll ever hear much from the fringe crowd about this one, though, because it was the face of a cat.

"I don't think we'll ever hear much from the fringe crowd about this one, though, because it was the face of a cat."

Obviously the ancient Egyptians got to Venus.

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