You nailed the Mars colors perfectly matching the results of my processing on areo.info ! When viewed outside of bsky in a web browser on recent Macbooks, the HDR display there shows the sun glare details like in your painting! In the screenshots below it's not visible as those are not HDR on bsky.

I could verify that the Viking Lander Life Detection device had a green cap on the soil sieve. It matches the color of the device on Mars in my Viking Lander images in the free areoHDR app: areo.info The Viking Lander 2 image was taken during winter at 48°N and shows water ice frost on the ground!

Today at the Viking Lander 50th anniversary at NASA Ames, one famous guest was an original Viking Lander Life Detection device with its Labeled Release (LR), Gas Exchange (GEX), and Pyrolytic Release (PR) experiments. Thanks to Steve Jurvetson who brought the unit from his museum!

Screenshots from my free areoHDR app. My guess is Tim Mutch, camera PI, is in the upper right background, and Bill Patterson is on the lower right looking at the poster. Those huge color prints were most likely created by Rex Stucky and William W. Smith nat the National Geographic photo lab.

This small note on page 2 of the January 1977 National Geographic magazine is the only publication I'm aware of where Viking Lander images are shown, color-processed in the same way as every commercial digital camera is applying them today. Who can match the names to the persons?

Martian Rock Design Competition winner, seen on full resolution 20MP Hazcam image yesterday sol 1921. Best with the areoHDR app. areo.info/mars20/ecams...

As far I know this is the first use case for the original Mars astrological symbol which directly involves its shape. 📷 www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-scienc...

Those blue crater spots on Mars are mysterious. First seen by Viking Orbiter in 1978, later also by the Chinese Tianwen-1 Mars Orbiter in 2022. Slide 10 from www.researchgate.net/publication/...

With the areoHDR app you can directly check the noon sunlight condition and Mars season for each image. Here mission day 23 vs 1028. The arrow indicates the lander latitude and the whole globe noon position rotates in relation to the sunlight from the right, depending on the orbital position.

No Starship launch today, but in the meantime try out my updated free areoHDR app with current Mars images from Perseverance Rover, and since this week all color images from Viking Lander 1 & 2 from 1976 - 1982! areo.info

Viking Lander 2 followed on September 3, 1976, with a landing on Mars in a far northern latitude of 48°N, compared to 22°N of Viking Lander 1. At that latitude later in the mission, morning water ice frost, or maybe even a thin layer of water snow was visible even late in the afternoon. 📷areoHDR app

My processing does not use any AI, it is a straightforward static calculation based on the RGB sensor spectral sensitivity of each of the cameras. The same method any commercial digital camera applies to the raw sensor data. The image below shows the process for digital images on Earth and Mars.

Most likely you have never seen those 1976 Mars Viking Lander images before in this high quality as almost all publicly available color images are low quality scans from then already old chemical film prints created in 1977. Now in my free areoHDR app for iPhone / iPad and Android: areo.info

Those historic Viking Lander color panoramas, up to 3 megapixels in size, look spectacular even today when processed in the same way as by every commercial digital camera on Earth. Explore all of them in this high quality with my free areoHDR app on iPhone, iPad & Android phones!

50 years ago on Monday (20 July 1976) Viking Lander 1 reached the Mars surface. The first U.S. landing on another planet and showed the first digital color images from another world. Now in the free areoHDR app for iPhone: apps.apple.com/app/areohdr/... and Android: play.google.com/store/apps/d...

It's just the USB cable to the rover lookup cam used during landing. There is even a green spot on the rover: researchgate.net/publication/...

Top 10 countries ranked by their years of continuously king-free existence up to the present: San Marino: 1725 Iceland: 1096 Switzerland: 735 United States: 250 Haiti: 222 Liberia: 179 Dominican Republic: 182 El Salvador: 185 Costa Rica: 178 Guatemala: 187

Great info graphic about the 3 Viking Lander life detection experiments as centerfold in National Geographic January 1977 :) The trinity: Pyrolytic Release Experiment (PR), Labeled Release Experiment (LR), Gas Exchange Experiment (GEX). Get an old original edition! Great gift for astrobiologists!

... not so much during sunlight (last image) More from those mission days 1180 and 1179: areo.info/mars20/ecams...

Another "poppy seeds" rock on Mars, shortly before the Cheyava Falls site where a few days later the one combined with "leopard spots" was found. The mineral appears to be highly UV absorbent as only in the night images under UV + white LEDs the tiny black spots are clearly visible ...

As above so below, the Perseverance Rover tracks are visible. 1900 Mars days (sols) now on the surface yesterday, 24 June 2026! 2nd photo: rover from 300 km above. Only possible with a clear atmosphere, like the sky seen from ground also shows. 📷 areo.info/mars20 , jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia26...

Dust Donuts on Mars: Still unexplained. A recent simple experiments on Earth failed to produce them by exposing a strong magnet to partly magnetic mineral dust. Video: youtube.com/watch?v=7Yv_... Color image from areo.info/mars20 (yesterday sol 1896)

The next visual light space telescope in the style of the Hubble Space Telescope with wavelength bands from UV to near IR could be @schmidtsciences.bsky.social Lazuli, planned launch 2028! 📷 from "The Lazuli Space Observatory: Architecture & Capabilities" 2026-01-05 arxiv.org/abs/2601.02556

Great choice by NASA / ESA for the Italian Luca Parmitano as pilot for Artemis III! And good timing for the cleaning of the fountain memorizing the Italian who gave to mankind a new world. Columbus Circle in front of Washington DC's Union Station a few days ago, now sparkly bright again.

... The often cited moon dust problem for human exploration he sees as overthinking. He wondered about the Artemis IV suit's weight of 2.5 times the one he wore in 1972. In his book decades ago he already predicted the economic feasibility threshold at 3000 $/kg into LEO (Apollo 60000 $/kg)...

Apollo 17 astronaut, and former Senator, Harrison "Jack" Schmitt (90) yesterday at the National Space Society's ISDC 2026 conference in McLean in an interview with Pascal Lee and Rod Pyle and later as speaker at the dinner. My notes of his most remarkable statements...

The early sols 31 - 46 in March 2021: Ingenuity Helicopter holding with its "arms" on the rover and feet dangling above the ground before the drop from Perseverance Rover. Future archeologists will wonder: What was hidden inside the violin case found empty on Mars? 📷 areo.info

... On iPhone the subscription is already available since many months. By subscribing you support further development by me and make new features possible. Android Play Store link: play.google.com/store/apps/d...

Also on Android my areoHDR app now provides access to all sols (days on Mars) since landing in 2021, by subscribing in the app. That makes the flight images from Ingenuity now available, early days during the helicopter deployment and a clean sand-free Perseverance Rover deck...

Bill Anders, Apollo 8 NASA Astronaut, active pilot at age 90 in his T-34, remembers the total blackness of the Moon against the stars during the few minutes on each orbit on Dec. 24, 1968, when they were out of sight from Earth & Sun. 📷 youtu.be/NHVqKgzIDdg?... , honeysucklecreek.net/msfn_mission...