D
ID YOU SEE news about a crab
spotted on Mars? Oh yes, it was
definitely a crab-like creature, as
you could see from images circulating on
social media. To be exact – as reported
more hysterical accounts – it was a
“Martian space crab” or “alien facehug-
ger”. Or, at the least, a space spider.
Oddly, the story was trumped days
later by reports of a 10cm-tall dark
lady on Mars – also spotted by NASA’s
Curiosity rover, as it began its fourth
year on the planet’s surface. Like the
crab, she was standing against a rocky
background. And she was hailed as
proof there is life out there.
You don’t have to look far to see
similar accounts of ‘incontrovertible’
evidence of lifelike activity on Mars.
Skeletons, pyramids, jelly doughnuts- you name it. Perhaps best known is
the Face on Mars, spotted by NASA’s
Viking 1 orbiter in 1976 as it passed
over a region known as Cydonia.
Almost 3km in length, the face had
humanoid features, and at the low
resolution of Viking’s cameras,
it looked like an alien artefact.
Conspiracy theories abounded, so
when the Mars Global Surveyor
satellite entered orbit around the
planet in September 1997, NASA
countered them by prioritising
Cydonia in its mapping program.
The feature was then revealed as
a rocky mesa, its surface gouged by
erosion, which looked nothing like a
face in the higher resolution images.
Like other Cydonia mesas, it is
probably an ancient lava dome.
This human tendency to perceive
patterns where none exist (such as
Jesus on a piece of toast) is called
‘pareidolia’, and applies both to visual
and auditory stimuli. There may be
some evolutionary value in recognis-
ing a face or an animal when detail is
minimal. The look-alike rock features
have a name, too – mimetoliths. Try
that out on conspiracy theorists next
time they see life forms in Mars’ rocks.FRED WATSON is astronomer-in-charge
of the Australian Astronomical Observatory.Born to be
deceived
Mysterious figures, faces and creatures
photographed by space probes are probably
not what they seem, says Fred Watson.
NASA
Are there five ways in which
the Earth moves as it travels
through space?
Bob Owen, Yarrawarrah, NSWThe Earth is moving in its orbit
around the Sun, which itself is
revolving around the centre of the
Milky Way. The Sun also has an
up-and-down motion. The Galaxy
has a motion of its own through
space, and also participates in the
‘Hubble flow’, which results from
the expansion of the universe. So
that’s five – except the last one is
technically a motion of space.If you have a space question for Fred,
email it to [email protected]Fred answers
your questions
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NAKED EYE Watch the
two brightest planets
drift apart in the eastern predawn
sky. November begins with Jupiter
to the upper left of brilliant Venus.
Jupiter rises rapidly and by
December’s end has entered the
evening sky, rising about 11pm.BINOCULARS Comet
C/2013 US10 (Catalina)
is low in the morning sky, rising
out of the Sun’s glare in late
November. On 8 December the
comet is directly below Venus
and the crescent Moon.SMALL TELESCOPE The
constellation of Sculptor
has some impressive galaxies, but
its flagship is NGC 253, the Silver
Dollar Galaxy. This edge-on spiral
extends across a medium power
eyepiece view. Also worth a visit is
globular star cluster NGC 288.Glenn Dawes is a co-author
of Astronomy 2015 Australia
(Quasar Publishing).Glenn Dawes
looking up
November–December 2015 27SPACE
x10x100Puzzles in space. Shapes spotted on Mars
include: a crab, a face, a lady and a pyramid.