If you’ve ever hopped onto a search engine and typed show me a picture of mars, you probably expected to see a dusty, butterscotch-colored ball hanging in the blackness of space. Or maybe you wanted that crisp, high-definition "Blueberry" rock shot from the Opportunity rover. What’s wild is that what we think Mars looks like depends almost entirely on who processed the image and why they did it. It’s not just a simple snapshot.
Mars is a liar. Well, the lighting is.
We see these stunning panoramic views of the Jezero Crater or the Valles Marineris and think, "Yeah, I could stand there and see that." But the truth is a bit more complicated because NASA often messes with the "white balance" of the photos they send back. They do this to help geologists identify rocks. If you were actually standing on the surface of the Red Planet, the sky wouldn't always be that soft salmon pink you see in posters. Sometimes, it’s a murky, hazy tan because of all the dust.
Why every picture of Mars looks different
The cameras on the Perseverance rover aren't like the one in your iPhone. They are scientific instruments. When you ask to see a picture of Mars, you're usually looking at one of three things: raw color, natural color, or false color.
Raw images are the "untouched" files. They often look dark, grainy, and kind of ugly. Natural color is the closest guess scientists have for what the human eye would see. Then there's false color. This is where things get weird. Scientists stretch the colors to make a subtle difference between an iron-rich rock and a magnesium-rich one look like the difference between neon green and bright purple. It’s great for science. It’s a bit misleading for your desktop wallpaper.
Look at the famous "Blue Marble" style shots taken by the Viking orbiters back in the 70s. Those images defined our mental image of the planet for decades. But if you compare them to the images coming off the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) today, the level of detail is terrifying. HiRISE can literally see a dinner plate on the surface from miles up in space.
📖 Related: 20 Divided by 21: Why This Decimal Is Weirder Than You Think
The blue sunset mystery
One of the most mind-bending things you'll find when you look for a picture of Mars is the sunset. On Earth, the sky is blue and the sunset is red. On Mars, it’s the exact opposite. Because the dust particles in the Martian atmosphere are just the right size to scatter blue light forward into the eye of someone looking toward the sun, the area around the sun looks blue. The rest of the sky is that familiar butterscotch red.
Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity have all captured this. It looks like a scene from a sci-fi movie that tried too hard, but it’s 100% real physics.
The rovers that changed the "Show me a picture of Mars" game
We can't talk about Mars photography without mentioning the hardware. The Mastcam-Z on Perseverance is basically the pinnacle of planetary imaging right now. It has a zoom function. It can take 3D images. It can take video.
Think back to the Pathfinder mission in 1997. The images were tiny. They were blurry. They took forever to download. Now, we are getting 4K video of a helicopter—Ingenuity—buzzing over the Martian dunes. That’s a massive leap in technology in less than thirty years.
- Viking 1 and 2 (1976): The pioneers. First clear looks at the surface.
- Pathfinder (1997): Proved we could put a "toy" sized rover on the ground and get 360-degree panoramas.
- Curiosity (2012-Present): The heavy hitter. It gave us the first "selfies" on Mars using a camera on the end of its robotic arm.
- Perseverance (2021-Present): The artist. It’s currently documenting the search for ancient life in an old river delta.
The Curiosity selfies are a masterpiece of engineering, by the way. People always ask, "Who took the picture if the rover is in the frame?" The rover takes dozens of photos of itself and stitches them together, digitally removing the robotic arm from the final shot. It’s basically the most expensive Instagram post in history.
👉 See also: When Can I Pre Order iPhone 16 Pro Max: What Most People Get Wrong
Seeing the "Canals" and other optical illusions
Before we had high-res cameras, people saw all kinds of crazy stuff. Percival Lowell, a wealthy businessman with a telescope, was convinced he saw canals built by an advanced civilization. He wasn't crazy; he was just looking through a shaky atmosphere with a lens that wasn't quite up to the task.
Then there was the "Face on Mars." In 1976, Viking 1 took a photo of a mesa in the Cydonia region that looked exactly like a human face. Conspiracy theorists went nuts. They thought it was a monument. But when the Mars Global Surveyor went back in 2001 with better cameras, the "face" turned out to be a regular old hill. It was just a trick of light and shadow—a phenomenon called pareidolia. Our brains are hardwired to find faces in everything.
Where to find the best real-time Mars photos
If you want to see what Mars looks like right now, you don't have to wait for a documentary. NASA actually hosts raw image galleries for the Perseverance and Curiosity missions.
You can literally see photos that were taken yesterday. Sometimes they still have the "raw" artifacts—black pixels where data was lost or weird fish-eye distortions from the hazard-avoidance cameras. It feels much more "real" than the polished PR photos.
- NASA’s Mars Exploration Program website: The gold standard.
- The HiRISE gallery (University of Arizona): For those "god-like" views from orbit.
- The Planetary Society: Great for context on what you’re actually looking at.
The problem with "Enhanced Color"
It’s tempting to only look at the pretty pictures. But we have to be careful. When a headline says "NASA finds green rocks on Mars," and shows a picture of emerald-colored stones, you have to read the fine print. Usually, those rocks are just slightly more olive-toned than the ones next to them, and the image has been "stretched" to show the difference.
✨ Don't miss: Why Your 3-in-1 Wireless Charging Station Probably Isn't Reaching Its Full Potential
This isn't NASA lying to you. It's NASA doing math with light.
The dust is the real enemy. It gets everywhere. It coats the solar panels (which killed the InSight lander and the Opportunity rover). It also hangs in the air, acting like a giant orange filter. If you cleaned the air on Mars, the planet would look significantly darker and more "chocolatey" than the bright orange we see in most media.
What's next for Mars photography?
We are moving past static photos. The future is immersive. With the data we have now, VR developers are creating 1:1 scale models of the Martian surface. You can put on a headset and "walk" around the hills of Gale Crater.
The next big step is the Mars Sample Return mission. For the first time, we won't just be looking at a picture of a rock; we will be looking at the rock itself in a lab on Earth. Until then, we rely on these robotic eyes.
Actionable ways to explore Mars today
Don't just look at one photo and move on. To really understand what the planet looks like, try these steps:
- Check the Raw Feeds: Go to the NASA JPL "Raw Images" page for Perseverance. Look at the timestamps. It's a surreal feeling knowing that a robot is sitting on another world, clicking its shutter, and sending that data through the vacuum of space to your phone.
- Compare Earth and Mars: Look at photos of the Atacama Desert in Chile or the volcanic fields in Iceland. The similarities are haunting. It helps ground the Martian photos in reality.
- Use Google Mars: Just like Google Earth, but for the Red Planet. It’s an incredible way to see the scale of things like Olympus Mons, which is a volcano the size of Arizona and three times the height of Mount Everest.
- Look for the Scale Bar: Scientific photos usually include a scale (like "1 cm" or "10 meters"). Without it, a tiny pebble on Mars can look like a massive boulder, and a giant crater can look like a small hole in the dirt.
Mars is a cold, dead, radiation-soaked desert. But through the lens of our rovers, it's also a place of incredible, haunting beauty. It's a world of blue sunsets, dust devils that tower miles high, and "blueberries" made of hematite. The more you look, the more you realize that the "Red Planet" is actually a million different colors, depending on how you're willing to see it.