Mark C. Carlotto

“Dr. Carlotto, a world-class imaging expert, and DOD contractor on a host of classified imaging analyses”

“Considering Carlotto’s membership in SPSR”

“Dr. Mark Carlotto had been brought in to the second Mars research group organized by Hoagland, the Mars Investigation Group, in 1985.”

“He knew the details—some of them quite obscure—of almost a decade of research on Cydonia carried out by DiPietro, Molenaar, Carlotto and Torun.”

“He used new imaging techniques to bring out more detail than Dipietro and Molenaar’s earlier method had from the two Viking images.”

“This image also eventually revealed (under enhancements by Dr. Mark Carlotto) what appeared to be teeth in the mouth, bilaterally crossed lines on the forehead and lateral striping on the western half.”

“Dr. Carlotto moved the research in a new direction when he developed a fractal analysis technique, to discern which objects in an image were the least consistent with the “natural” background, to be used on the Cydonia images.”

“After an initial study of about 3,000 square kilometers around the Face, Carlotto and his partner, Michael C. Stein, determined that the Face and the Fortress were the two most “non-fractal” objects in that terrain.”

“Pressed to go even further, they eventually used the program on images covering some 15,000 square kilometers around the Face. The results were consistent with the earlier run-through. The Face was by far the most non-natural object in the surveyed terrain.”

“NASA responded through Dr. Malin to the effect that Carlotto had not measured anything other than the fact that the Face was different, rather than artificial, and suggested that if he applied the technique to a broader area, he would find that the curve would smooth out, and that the Face was not all that unusual.”

“This response ignored the fact that Carlotto had already done just that by expanding the survey from 3,000 square kilometers to 15,000 and that, contrary to Malin’s assertions, the Face’s uniqueness was even more pronounced.”

“Lacking the funds to expand the research even further, Carlotto offered to turn the program over to NASA so that the agency could continue the survey over the entire Martian surface. NASA’s response was a polite “thanks, but no thanks.””

“Carlotto produced a better ortho-rectification than the NASA version, and still others produced even better versions.”

“Carlotto contended that the Face might be artificial, but that if it was, it was in a “highly eroded” state.”

“it seems to substantiate earlier 3D shape-from-shading work done by Mark Carlotto that indicated it might actually be a horizontal “entrance point,” either from a projectile or as an actual architectural entrance.”

“Enhancements by Carlotto revealed that the “D&M” seemed to be a *five-sided pentagonal* object, rather than four-sided, as Dipietro had argued”

“would be attended by many of the principals involved in the independent investigation, including Dr. Mark Carlotto, Dr. Tom Van Flandern, Dr. David Webb and architect Robert Fiertek.”

“At the meeting, which was attended by McDaniel, Carlotto and Brandenberg among others, Pilcher feigned interest and promised that Cydonia would be imaged at every opportunity during the “science mapping phase” of the mission.”

““Moreover, they said that they are in fact very interested in these objects, for two reasons. There are two groups in NASA. One group believes that [UFO researchers] are all wrong, and they want to prove it. So they want to take these pictures to prove that you’re wrong, so you’ll go away. The other group—and our sense is that it’s a small but growing group within NASA—believes that we have some interesting data, and they want to take a closer look at it.””

“Shortly before we published our revelation of the existence of two THEMIS Cydonia IR images, on August 29, 2002, SPSR’s Dr. Mark Carlotto put out his own analysis of the Cydonia multispectral image.”

“the IR image is referred to as “E0201847.gif,” which is the wrong file name for the multispectral Cydonia image, “20020724A””

“Bara subsequently e-mailed Carlotto, informing him he’d made several errors in his article, and advising him to pull it, at least until we published our own analysis.”

“Carlotto e-mailed Bara back, got Hoagland’s phone number, and the two men had a chat on September 4.”

“According to Hoagland, what Carlotto seemed most concerned about was that his previously published paper would be made obsolete by our article.”

“Carlotto agreed to take the “real” image, perform all of the proper steps (composite, color ratios and decorrelation-stretch) on it, and either call or e-mail Hoagland with his results.”

“That never happened.”

“Carlotto decided instead to take the “official” version of the Cydonia THEMIS image and subject it to a series of contrast and blur filters in an apparent attempt to “prove” that the Laney image was generated by degrading the official one.”

“This led him to conclude “its similarity to the top left [“real”] image strongly suggests that the Enterprise image is an altered version of the ASU image.””

“Keith Laney, at our request, produced an image similar to the section that Carlotto had done, only with the various bands properly aligned geometrically. It took him all of five minutes.”

“Not only are the THEMIS blocks—which Carlotto now flatly claims are “enhancement” or “filtering” artifacts—clearly visible on *his own work* from twelve years ago, but they match up very precisely with the blocks on the Laney image, *literarily one for one*”

“We simply challenge him again in this volume—as we did in 2002—to produce and *publish* the composites, color ratios and decorrelation-stretch results from the appropriate multi-spectral analysis he promised Richard Hoagland he would do on the “leaked” THEMIS image.”

“The authors and Keith Laney conferenced about Carlotto’s article on the night of September 3. The general consensus was that Carlotto had effectively “polished a turd””

“Hoagland, however, refused to buy into the notion that Carlotto was as incompetent as his analysis made it seem. He staunchly defended Carlotto’s skills and professionalism”

“Analysis of video from Space Shuttle mission STS-80 provides new insight into a number of unusual events captured by a camera aboard the space shuttle Columbia in 1996. Three different phenomena are analyzed: 1) two slow moving circular objects, 2) a number of fast moving objects in space near the shuttle, and 3) a strange luminous apparition near the earth's surface.”

“Perhaps the most interesting observation is a rapidly moving burst of light that appears near the earth's surface off the east coast of Puerto Rico.”

“Occurring well before sunrise, away from thunderstorm activity”

“moving at an estimated speed of over 500 miles/sec.”

“A map of Puerto Rico (Fig. 4c) matches the shape of the corrected pattern of lights (Appendix C), establishing the location of the event just off the east coast of Puerto Rico, near Vieques.”

“this is one of the most unusual phenomena observed to date by the shuttle”

“F1 cannot be a missile because it is moving at a constant speed from the point it is first seen, off the east coast of Puerto Rico, to the point it disappears.”

“It is also moving much too fast – its estimated speed is within the range of jets, sprites, ball lightning, and other previously documented phenomena.”

“Two objects have generated a great of popular interest due to their disk-like shape.”

“U2 has generated significant interest and speculation in the way it suddenly appears in the video.”

“The most likely explanation is that U1 and U2 are ice particles or other relatively small objects in close proximity to the orbiter.”

“With the exception of S7 and S9, all of the other objects are moving generally in a northwest direction (± 45°).”

“If we suppose that these objects are satellites, they are in retrograde orbits, which would be highly unlikely.”

“The streaks cannot be Geminid meteors because they are moving in the wrong direction.”

“In September 1991, live video showing as many as a dozen objects moving in unusual trajectories was captured by cameras aboard shuttle mission STS-48.”

“NASA's assessment was that the objects were orbiter-generated debris illuminated by the sun, the flash of light was a thruster firing, and the change in motion of the particles resulted from the impact of gas jets from the thrusters².”

“Jack Kasher produced five proofs that the objects seen in the video could not be ice particles disturbed by a thruster firing³.”

“Also shown is a map of the area (Fig. C-2c) and registered Earth light data (Fig. C-2d) from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP).”

“Dr. Carlotto is a colleague of mine at the Society for Planetary SETI Research.”

“He's also done a lot of work on lunar and Mars anomalies over the decades.”

“NASA's never really addressed, though, the questions that have been raised by Dr. Mark Colotto, yourself or other commentators, have they? Not officially.”

“There is one person from NASA, James Oberg, who has had some back and forth with Dr. Carlotto, as well as my colleague, Jack Kasher, who also wrote this really extensive study of the STS-48 video. But he seemed to do this basically on his own. not necessarily officially on behalf of NASA.”

“Dr. Carlotto has analyzed this footage in this paper from 2005, I believe it was published. And he actually calculates that this object is moving at, he calls it F1, and he has a time lapse sequence photographs for this object of interest.”

“Carlotto himself does say that there is some sort of correlation between the DSP satellite data at the time over that region of the Earth and what was seen in STS-48 and he actually gives a reference for this in his research paper on the topic.”