Face on Mars. Viking 1 spacecraft image (at left) and Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft image of the face on Mars" feature in the Cydonia region. This eroded mesa-like land formation is 1.5 km across. When an image of this feature was first taken by Viking 1 in 1976, it appeared remarkably like a human head with shadows giving the illusion of eyes, nose and a mouth. Here, the Viking image has been enlarged 3.3 times the original resolution to make it roughly the same size as the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) image. The image at right has the contrast reversed to simulate lighting conditions for the Viking image. The MOC image is at 10x higher resolution than Viking 1."