Ok, so the redder pictures that are being released were taken at other wavelengths? I haven't been able to follow the press conferences. That makes sense, I wish NASA would include that information in the caption somewhere, maybe they have and I missed it. I think the general public would probably more interested in how it looks in the visual spectrum, do you know if any of those are online anywhere? --Paul ---------- From: Patrick Wiggins Sent: Friday, January 16, 2004 7:48 PM To: Utah Astronomy Subject: [Utah-astronomy] Re: Mars Colors Paul Witte wrote:
When my friend first sent me the following link I thought, "Oh great, another conspiracy theorist".
Or that the person putting the page theory together does not understand how colors look in different wavelengths. Much of the stuff on the page has been discussed during the daily press conferences (in one case they noted that one of those color tabs on the "Marsdial" would be brilliant white if viewed in infrared. Patrick _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.utahastronomy.com
Paul Witte wrote:
Ok, so the redder pictures that are being released were taken at other wavelengths?
Not to confuse things, but the quick answer to your question would be "not necessarily". When they use different wavelengths that changes the appearance. But there are also a number of other variables that will change how an image looks. One of my jobs at the late, great Hansen Planetarium was to copy prints and slides. What a chore it was to get the colors right. I had a large color chart that I shot a picture of at the start and end of each roll of film. Try as I might, I rarely got it perfect, but after a few years of doing it I could get it close enough that most folks would not notice the difference unless they compared the copy to the original. Getting back to digital, one of those variables (which they've mentioned a few times during the news conferences) is the monitor on which the images are viewed. I have three monitors on my desk and images look different on each one. Another thing that changes the look are the eyes doing the looking. That's to say different people see the same colors differently. And then there's how the guy putting the images together does his thing. Images from Mars come down in black and white (no color cameras on the lander) and it's up to the individual "coloring" the images to get it right.
I wish NASA would include that information in the caption somewhere, maybe they have and I missed it. Some times they do, especially when false colors have been added to bring out detail. But sometime they don't.
I think the general public would probably more interested in how it looks in the visual spectrum, do you know if any of those are online anywhere? By that do you mean how it would look to the human eye? If so, as I mentioned before, it's up to the image technicians to get it as close to the real thing as they can.
Patrick
On Jan 17, 2004, at 2:18 AM, Patrick Wiggins wrote:
[...]
One of my jobs at the late, great Hansen Planetarium was to copy prints and slides. What a chore it was to get the colors right. I had a large color chart that I shot a picture of at the start and end of each roll of film. Try as I might, I rarely got it perfect, but after a few years of doing it I could get it close enough that most folks would not notice the difference unless they compared the copy to the original.
[...]
When I was a student at Rice University in the 70s, Gene Roddenberry came by to give a talk about making Star Trek. It was all pretty interesting (I especially enjoyed the blooper reel), but one of the salient points I remember is when he described shooting an episode where the aliens had blue (or green) skin. The parts kept coming back from the lab with flesh tones for the aliens. Finally he spoke to them, and they realized what colors they were supposed to be. They had been correcting for "obvious color flaws." Color photography is tough... Jim ---- Jim Cobb james@cobb.name
Having been a technician in a custom color lab for some 5 years, this topic has always interested me. It actually goes beyond technical limitations. Different people see colors differently- there really is no such thing as perfect color fidelity for this reason. A few years ago I read of a woman in England who could see colors most other people couldn't, due to a genetic condition. She posessed cones that most of us don't. I recall that she said she sometimes had to laugh at friend's outfits- to her eye, the colors obviously didn't match. She sees a world colored very differently than most of us, just because she has an extra set of color receptors. Since she can see a wider portion of the spectrum, (or perhaps more accurately, she can resolve the color spectrum more finely than we can) the researcher posited that she was actually seeing a more "true" rendition of the world than the rest of us! It is possible to get 9 out of 10 people to agree that a print is rendered in "true color", but 100% concensus is impossible. C. --- James Cobb <james@cobb.name> wrote:
Color photography is tough...
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Hi Paul (and anyone else who is interested), if you click on this link you will get to the Rover homepage. http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html Then click on "All Press Images," which will bring up links to color views. Also if you go to the URL above and click instead on "All Raw Images," that will bring up a day-by-day archive of the photos that have been posted on the web. Or as NASA might say, a sol-by-sol archive, since they insist on calling Martian days "sols." Best wishes, Joe
participants (5)
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Chuck Hards -
James Cobb -
Joe Bauman -
Patrick Wiggins -
Paul Witte