Faces from the Chasmas

So as not to interrupt the conversation going on in the "MRO--first looks" thread, I want to post what I found on "Flattop." So I'll revive this thread.

Flattop is located in Newton crater at about 158W, 14.64S. The sculpture is at the base of a crater wall within the big Newton crater. It measures around 220 meters wide and so is not very much bigger than some of the HIRISE faces we have been viewing. But as Tom says, due to the absence of interference from “background noise,” it is easy to see despite the low resolution and relative small size for an MOC face.

First a MOLA area map showing the terrain in context. Flattop is top dead center of the bottom-most crater within the big crater. Note that even though we are in the southern dichotomy hemisphere with its average higher terrain altitude, Newton is green, which indicates below planetary mean altitude. Why is that important? Because it is consistent with my “location prediction” model for artificial structures.



Next is EO302550, the first MOC image in which flattop is found. Resolution is 4.19 m/p, sun is coming from west.



E03 crop.



Confirming image E2100825. Resolution is 5.05 m/p and cliff area is in shade. Important to note in this late afternoon, southern winter image is the large shadow coming from Flattop, confirming that if artificial, it is a sculpture,



Finally here is R0300585. Resolution is better at 2.99 m/p, but the image was overexposed and required extreme contrast and brightness enhancement to see. We can barely distinguish two eyes with irises, not visible in the previous two images, in which the eye sockets were in the shade and lacked sufficient resolution to see the details.

Nice work, Neil. Incidentally, Mike Luckman was the first to publicize this object when it was first shown on the MSSS site. He called it "Easter Island Man". -|Tom|-

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Incidentally, Mike Luckman was the first to publicize this object when it was first shown on the MSSS site. He called it "Easter Island Man". -|Tom|-
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I stand corrected. It would be nice to publicize at some point all of the veteran discoveries of artifacts in an early MRB online, when the time comes.

Neil

Easter Island. The similarity is interesting.

I think this offers a great test for a size prediction. I don't know if Mike Luckman did that already, but if space aliens are responsible for both Easter Island here on Earth, and this Martian Easter Island Man, there might be some reason to suspect they're both the same size. Say, within 5%. A negative test might not rule it out, totally, but a positive test would be compelling, to say the least.

(Nevermind, I see that you said the Martian one is 220 meters. I haven't been able to tell how big the Easter Island statues are, but I'd guess that 220m is out of the question.)

Another test might be whether or not the Martian head is really a head and torso, like at Easter Island, but buried up to its neck.

rd

Many or most of the faces I've found in the MOC images have never been posted due mainly to noisy background. Here's one typical example.

www.msss.com/moc_gallery/r10_r15/images/R10/R1004151.html

R1004151, Man with Helmet. To make matters worse the face is south oriented; doing a normal cursory search one would never find it. Yet once found it’s interesting. Face is around 280 meters wide, B & C enhanced. Notice symmetrical, detailed “eyes” and straight “helmet line.” Context image is unenhanced.