Mars says, "Have a Nice Day!"

I smell a photoshop

Art, George and Richard are looking at each other and nodding knowingly.

Nope, I think it is real!

HOW COME INSTANTLY EVERYONE ASSUMES IT'S PHOTOSHOPED? COME ON...

OMG
IT'S A PICTURE
SO IT MUST BE PHOTOSHOPPED
OMG

Well, actually, it's surely photoshopped not because natural formations can't have recognizable shapes, but because this picture resembles powerfully a well-known panel from the comic book "Watchmen", where a conversation between two characters takes place in a crater in mars shaped like the "have a nice day" smiley.

This is the one:

http://aycu26.webshots.com/image/42825/2005636002825824114_rs.jpg

You can't be certain a thing is a photoshop piece because there was a similar image in a comic book. There /is/ still such a thing as coincidence.

Point out warping, or shadowing, or something concrete or just leave the 'it's photoshop!' warcry to people who actually use the beast of a program and can spot and detail the specifics.

Why do people claim its a fake without taking 2 minutes to follow the links...

http://www.msss.com/msss_images/2008/01/31/

It's not fake nor is it the first crater smiley face to have ever been photographed. There is one taken all the way back from Viking 1.

Hehehehehe!

Forgive me, but if this was real it would be a staggeringly unlikely coincidence; not least because the scene from Watchmen that this resembles was about staggeringly unlikely coincidences.

Since there is a Watchmen movie in production, pardon me if I am cynical. I'd love it if it was real, but...

Addendum: according to Wikipedia, The Watchmen crater is Galle crater, and there is an image that actually shows the Smiley-faceness of it that predates the comic.

So if you believe Wikipedia, there is no coincidence to be cynical about.

That's one stoned Martian.

My first guess would have been PS also, but looking at the source of the image (Nasa/JPL), I'm inlined to believe it's real. It's not like it was on some random blog and bounced around the web umpteen times.

If it's a joke by someone at Nasa/JPL, then they apparently don't desire any more public funding as this would be a PR disaster waiting to happen.

It's not staggeringly coincidental; there have been studies done that show that humans are hardwired to see faces in pretty much anything we possibly can. If it has two dots in the upper portion that we can see as eyes, the whole darn thing is a face to us. This one happens to have a more or less semicircular squiggle we can see as a face, too. It's only surprising if we buy into the idea that this configuration of makrs has some kind of relevance.

maybe it is coincidences. we should not have wronged him.

WOW! is this the second 1 because I think it was last year when a smile face was discover but it was on the moon.

That is do cool. I agree with oakling, people see faces in just about everything and anything. I see faces everywhere I look. There's one staring back at me right now. Anyway, real or not, it has my attention!

not as interesting as the other martian pic reveal earlier..

I can already see how the conspiracy people will use this picture to create even more mysteries around Mars.

I mean c-mon, this face got to be artificial or something.

interesting!

This is what you call a craterface.

Photoshoped? Since when did Adobe Photoshop becomes a verb?

'Photoshop' was verbed years ago.

Maybe that's how all Aliens looks like?

People have photoshopping long before one could google and yet we still get people throwing out claims of alteration without any claims of why. Can you spot embossing? Are pixels not grouped in natural formations?

Without a thought or reason it's just another annoying version of the 'me too!' and 'first!' posting sytle.

Maybe it's smiling back at the Smiley Face Galaxy:

Ummm... All the people banging on about how it can't be true because it's in Watchmen, DO YOUR RESEARCH. Alan Moore has stated several times that the fact that there IS a smiley face crater on Mars was a happy coincidence, and when he found out about it he couldn't believe his luck and wrote it into the comic.

how pleasant to see a planet smiling back! cooincidence or not, smiley faces always make me happy.

Photoshop or not... this is a cool pic!

It's not even a crater...

Well, I guess this confirms aliens were there when Forrest wiped his face with that guy's shirt. I knew it!

Miss C you beat me to it! Craterface, indeed!

Some time before Jupiter was resolved into more than a yellowish brownish blob there was a magazine printed with a picture of a gas giant on the front with a huge red storm

shit happens

This is cool, I'd love to know what made the mouth, I first thought maybe NAZA had used Spirit or Opportunity to make it, that'd be funny. But would probably take a while..

Laws of probability state that any and all scenarios can and will be played out. Taking this into consideration, the Mars smiley face is not so coincidental. :)

In the comic, this crater is located in "Argyre planitia" (Dr. Manhattan says that few pages ago).

Some kind of joke :)
But really nice joke :))

thats hot, but i think enrique is hotter

its pretty cool how things can happen like that but more amazing things have happened.

Clearly photoshopped, nice idea, I applaud. :)

that was cool whether photoshopped or not. I think this one surely is a good graphic to use for Educational PowerPoint templates. How I love to see that smiley Martian face be included in this list of Educational PowerPoint Templates:
http://www.free-power-point-templates.com/category/ppt-by-topics/education/

Cheers!
Mars