On April 1, 2001 Mars Global Surveyor aimed its camera at the Cydonia region of Mars. What was obtained was a high resolution (1.5 meter/pixel) image of the "face" on Mars.

After considerable political pressure the picture was finally released to the public on about May 25th, 2001.

At first look it appears that there is nothing there except an eroded mesa with some symmetry around the base. Others have taken each half of the face and mirrored it thereby creating a complete picture that resembles a face of a lion. The argument that is being currently put forth by Richard C. Hoagland and others is that the picture is really two pictures in one, left and right halves being different pictures. He has given examples of similar artifacts found on Earth.

After downloading and viewing the picture for some time I could feel that something more was there. What I instinctively was getting while viewing the photo was that it had a holographic quality to it. Holograms are produced by creating an interference pattern from two or more sources. Each source is mixed with the others to create the hologram.

I thought that perhaps the decoding key was the difference in the two halves of the picture so I used the whole picture as a reference and a mirror image (horizontally flipped) as a demodulator. The two pictures were then aligned and multiplied.

What can be seen in this picture are a number of familiar looking creatures including a Human face (large), a fox (upper center), a monkey (inside the fox face) and a little Buddha (bottom center). Also can be seen faces looking left and right. All symmetry is the result of the decoding process.

The download from NASA was upside down from the earlier pictures taken by the Viking spacecraft. I hadn't realized this until I printed out the picture and was showing it to a colleague and in doing so I found myself looking at it upside down which in itself was an quite an aha.

In this view can be seen a lion face (large) with human like features. It reminds me of a character from the movie/play Cats. A number of other of other creatures can be seen in the area of the forehead of the lion. These range from a small snake to a larger beaver.

I have been asked if I were to take a picture of some geological feature here on Earth and apply the same process if I would see the same result, specifically human like features. My response is that the symmetry is a result of the process but the images are a result of the viewer. What you would get is an image that could resemble a bone, a heart , a butterfly or any other symmetrical object.

I leave it up to you to determine if this is of value.

Oliver