Nefertiti's Family

Thanks Rich,

You're getting you sceince legs back.

Re: Emanuel's post. If you've ever studied the works of Michaelangelo, you may remember that some of his sculptures were extremely life-like, (e.g, the David, and the Moses), and others were at the other end of the scale, meaning they were very rough hewn and interpretive. In some ways, his works remind me of this montage.

This is very speculative but my impression is that your "warrior angels" above and the "devil/gargoyles" below are part of the mosaic, and both extremes are interpretive. But given the very life-like figures of humans and dog in the middle, and taken as a whole, I think we can accept the less life-like more ephimerial figures as significant, and part of the theme; for there surely is one.

Not to beat a dead horse but maybe someone can run the histogram on the gargoyle below. (Actually there are a couple of them but I'll leave that alone.)

Neil

"is that a little birdy in front of the gorilla's mouth?"

You're kidding right?

Seriously though, I'm trying to see if any of the images we have been discussing are the result of pareidolia, or if they are objectively real. The more we can enhance them in ways that are trustworthy, the more confidence we will have. So yes, when you enhance the original E05 (the highest resiolution) gif of the gargoyle, we will have more information that can go a long way toward increasing our confidence in; a) the existence of the images, and; b) the artificialty hypothesis.

Neil

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by neilderosa</i>
<br />You're kidding right?
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
No, actually I was dead serious. It looks like a little chikadee to me.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by neilderosa</i>

So yes, when you enhance the original E05 (the highest resiolution) gif of the gargoyle, we will have more information that can go a long way toward increasing our confidence in; a) the existence of the images, and; b) the artificialty hypothesis.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Neil, I don't think it's really true that the jpg is automatically going to reveal less information. Not where it counts, anyway. I think that's based on a misconception. If you go back now and look at the gargoyle and the gorilla (which are now smoothed HE gifs), you can see that it really didn't change things all that much. A little, maybe, but not so much that it changes anything in my mind, and probably not in the eyes of most viewers. That's sort of what I've been seeing.

I think there are both macro issues, and micro issues, and in many cases changing the micro (gif vs. jpg) isn't going to affect the macro. I'm sure there are exceptions, but I've seen this a number of times. Not to mention the fact that gifs take up more space. So there's the "diminshing returns" aspect of this also.



rd

I'd like to take one more look at the difference between M03 and R12. As Neil noted in an earlier post, they have the most similar image acquisition parameters. The one significant difference is the Solar longitude, which is different by 137.18 deg. If I understand Sun Azimuth correctly, they are not that different, +19.81 vs -8.12:

M0305549:
Solar longitude: 178:15 (just before southern spring)
Scaled Pixel Width: 5.65
Time: 14.72 (around 2:45 PM)
Sun azimuth: 19.81
Gain mode: AA: (hexadecimal)
Profile visible, area lighted


R1201454
SL: 315.33 (southern summer)
SPW: 5.97
Time: 13.51
SA: 351.88
GM: AA (hexadecimal)
Profile not visible and offset to left, area darkened except for bright spots.

So, I think I've reduced this to a fairly straightforward question. Is the difference in Solar longitude enough to cause the following difference in image and histogram? I've cropped these images from the full resolution gif, with no enhancements. Just the raw data. I tried to make them as close to the same as possible, but you'll note they are slightly rotated relative to one another. I don't think that's significant, though.

{Image deleted temporarily} M0305549_1.gif
{Image deleted temporarily} R1201454_1.gif

{Image deleted temporarily} M03Hist1.JPG

{Image deleted temporarily} R12Hist1.JPG




rd

At the begining of this post Rich mentioned a paper we were working on together. I'm one of those impractical kind of guys who is forever writing and revising my work to the point of annoying everyone around me sometimes. So we were already several revisions deep in this paper on the Profile Image, which I considered as a "new interpretation," when Rich made his discovery of the new (and very old) faces and we had to revise yet again.

To parphrase Halton Arp, sometimes your original aim fails, (or pales by comparison), but you discover something far more significant, and important in the process. I think that is what happened in this case.

Fortunately (or unfortunately as it turned out) the paper was already accepted and edited for publication in the Meta Research Bulletin just before Rich's discovery, so the new information did not get into this paper.

What was the paper about? Subscribers to the MRB will see in a couple of days. Please feel free to make any comments on this post. We hope to publish an update to the paper sometime in the near future to include all the new information.

Neil

Originally posted by rderosa <blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">If you compare all of the new images with the M03 image, the first thing you see is that there appear to be way more bright shiny spots,<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
In rereading this post by Rich a thought struck me. Mark had sugested that new protocols would have to be established to take into account new image processing features such as "smoothing," "noise reduction," and "histogram equalizer." My first reaction was that they don't significantly alter the raw data and they make the image easier to see, so they should therefore be legitimate enhancement procedures in that don't "unfairly" alter the raw data. I'm specifically referring to the ways in which the original Viking images of the Face at Cydonia were "enhanced" by adding new features that didn't appear in the original raw data at all.

I'm afraid there is a danger of going down that road again if we are not careful. Here's what I mean. In the quote above Rich was noting that there were "more shiny spots" in R07 and R12 than there were in M03. Now in the original raw data enhancements of M03 and E05, before the new "enhancements" were introduced, and we had only "contrast and brightness" adjustments, there were far more <b>dark </b>spots, in the image. Now bear with me for a moment.

When the smoothing and noise reduction techniques were introduced, the first thing you noticed was that there were far less dark spots. And this was seen as "cool" because it made the image look more "real" to us. But what I'm suggesting here is that these procedures may unfairly alter the image by removing essential data. Rich noted above the increase in shiny spots; and also, we both noted in another place that the Sun azimuth was different in the new images.

My point is that if the "shiny spots" are really reflective, strewn boulders, they might appear as "dark spots" if the Sun were coming from a different angle, (like a diamond sparkles when you move it in the sun). So by "erasing" (as it were) some, or even many, of the dark spots in the "smoothing" or "noise reduction" process, you are in effect "erasing" data which would later appear as shiny spots in another image, and you are thus confusing the issue by tampering with the data. I think we should carefully evaluate whether this should be acceptable, no matter how pleasing to the eye the new procedures may be.

Neil