Dreamcatcher

After Viking 1 Orbiter flew past Mars on July 31, 1976 at an altitude of 1,278 miles, taking pictures of the surface, some new and interesting information suddenly appeared in a photograph released and described by NASA only as “the northern latitudes of Mars.”

In the photograph since published several times, a huge rock formation that looks like a face can be seen. This formation has been measured as one mile across. NASA claims that it is an illusion caused by the angle of the sun.

To the left of the photo are two rock formations which appear to be pyramidical in shape. They are clearly throwing out triangular shadows. Parallel lines, looking like perfectly straight runways or roads appear in the upper let hand portion on the photo.

According to Jim Safran of Lunar Photos in Van Nuys, California, these markings appear in quite a few of the Viking Mars photos. Oddly, these artificial-looking markings have been cropped out of photos appearing in Omni magazine and are not mentioned.

But two computer scientists who work for Computer Science echnicolor Associates, of Seabrook, Maryland, contract workers for NASA, noticed the photos, and decided to analyze them. The scientists, Vincent DiPietro and Greg Molenaar concluded that the face in the photos, taken of the Elysian Plains, would “appear to have been carved rather than formed by nature,” as there is no surrounding sediment that could have resulted from natural erosion.

Additionally, they concluded that the face was truly symmetrical, having two halves, each containing an “eye,” a “cheek” and continuation of the “mouth.” They even discovered what resembles an eyewall with a visible pupil in the eye socket!

Then science writer Richard Hoagland got original copies of the photos and claimed to have found, in the same photo, a “lost civilization on Mars,” as reported in Omni, Vol. 7 No. 6, March, 1985!

They turned their attentions to the pyramid features to the left of the face, and to the grid-like markings like the plan of a city in the shadows of the upper pyramid. Hoagland also spotted a series of right angles contributing to an overall impression of a main avenue leading toward the face.

Hoagland discovered that this “avenue” seems to be aligned with the face, which runs along a northeast-southwest axis with the Martian poles.

A Martian standing in the center of the “city,” gazing east over the face, would be sighting along a solstice alignment; that is, seeing the sun rise directly over the face on the longest day of the Martian year. Hoagland surmised that for 50,000 years, the first summer sun of the year would have risen above the face.

As the planet tilted with time, the alignment of the solstice viewing would have passed right through the top of the pyramid.

The honeycomb-like walls in the shadow of the pyramid cast shadows. The grid spacing suspiciously resembles that of real city streets, and the layout is aligned toward the winter solstice sunrise.

An architect friend of Hoagland’s calculated the buildings were originally oriented in a manner to best use the scant winter warmth of the shortest day of the Martian year.

Harold Masursky, senior scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey and one of the world’s leading experts on Martian geology, in charge of selecting the sites where the Viking landers set down, told Omni magazine, “If you’re going to say features like that are evidence for a past civilization, that’s total nonsense. I’m working on finding landing sites for a possible Mars Rover. And this is not one of the areas where I would send what is probably a thirty-billion dollar mission. In fact, if somebody bought us a free one, I’m not sure I’d send it there because there are too many other places that are more interesting.”

Is Masursky toeing the party line by refusing to acknowledge the possibility of life on Mars at some time in the distant past? He is not an idiot, and considering NASA’s startling finds on the Moon, their many secret projects and cover ups, it is not surprising that he would make those declarations.

He is either on the periphery of NASA knowledge, and actually believes that there is nothing worth viewing, or he is trying to divert attention from this startling find and cover up what may even be a “live city.”