The Face on Mars

The most famous of all extraterrestrial human-like features was first described as appearing to have eyes and nostrils by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1976.

But the feature was revealed by subsequent photographs to be a rather mundane mountain whose striking facial features depend on sunlight hitting it at a certain angle.

Here is the original caption that NASA released with the image:

"NASA's Viking 1 Orbiter spacecraft photographed this region in the northern latitudes of Mars on July 25, 1976 while searching for a landing site for the Viking 2 Lander. The speckled appearance of the image is due to missing data, called bit errors, caused by problems in transmission of the photographic data from Mars to Earth. Bit errors comprise part of one of the 'eyes' and 'nostrils' on the eroded rock that resembles a human face near the center of the image. Shadows in the rock formation give the illusion of a nose and mouth. Planetary geologists attribute the origin of the formation to purely natural processes. The feature is 1.5 kilometers (one mile) across, with the sun angle at approximately 20 degrees. The picture was taken from a range of 1,873 kilometers (1,162 miles)."

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