New and in color mars pics from opp

and here is the comment by nasa

This high-resolution image captured by the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity's panoramic camera highlights the puzzling rock outcropping that scientists are eagerly planning to investigate. Presently, Opportunity is on its lander facing northeast; the outcropping lies to the northwest. These layered rocks measure only 10 centimeters (4 inches) tall and are thought to be either volcanic ash deposits or sediments carried by water or wind. Data from the panoramic camera's near-infrared, blue and green filters were combined to create this approximate, true-color image.

approximate true color hmmm so NASA doesnt even know the true colors of mars or are they adding color to make it that red color.

[Edited on 29-1-2004 by Kriskaos]

Why, oh why, when we look to the sky, does this beautiful planet dead look so red??

(Point being from earth it looks red. Why are so many of you convinced it's got a blue atmosphere and they're hiding it from us?!)

If that picture was taken near dusk or dawn, or durring a dust storm it could be true color. However, i honestly question that myself.

after starring at those rocks for a while, that NASA says are only 4 inches high and where possibly blown by the wind (yea right).

It just dawned on me that (what if) that is a decomposing structure, say of something that looks similar to a dragon or a dinasour. That has just been uncovered by recent wind activity. It could have been slowly decomposing or petrafing for thousands or millions of years.

Do you see the triangle shape head, the long body, what looks like a leg folded back, a spine type structure and possibly a bony whip like tail ?

or maybe its a long body space craft that crashed on Mars and is slowely rotting away.

Maybe thats why all of a sudden NASA is like, well thats REALLY unexpected and peculiar. They only say stuff like that when something catches them off guard. You would think they had a detailed landing area map with key structures in mind.

????

This whole color thing is confusing me. I thought I understood Kano's explanation...but then I see beautiful color pictures taken by ESA Mars Express and then these boring red brown NASA pics.

How can ESA and NASA have such major differences in their color perspective? Don't they both use Filters??

and that bedrock stuff....When I first saw it, I thought of a flagstone walkway or driveway...

robertfenix ive been studying those pics of the panorama for days and nights ive also noticed a day earlier than nasa hehe that the soil around the rocks is rougher then the finer soil away from the rim of the crater this can also state that those rocks have been not long ago uncoverd because of the diff in soil types. I doesnt look like a fossilized skeleton to me but more like a foundation or roadlike structure.

more info on this thread.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Originally posted by Kriskaos
Data from the panoramic camera's near-infrared, blue and green filters were combined to create this approximate, true-color image.

This is not a color image. It may look like color, but the red is not really red. It is infared.

(Point being from earth it looks red. Why are so many of you convinced it's got a blue atmosphere and they're hiding it from us?!)

This ridicule is ignorance that needs to be denied.

Your derision is misplaced... though rather common among pseudo-intellectuals with only enough knowledge to be dangerous, without actually being truly informed. Why believe that it would be reasonable to see a blue sky on Mars?

Simple science, really. Most planets with an atmosphere will tend to have a blue sky due to Rayleigh scattering. The color of the sky is largely a function of scattered light. The sky might appear DARKER due to a less-dense atmosphere, but would not change from blue to red.

Sure, in the middle of a sandstorm or immediately after, it might be discolored... but the sandstorms are not constant, and the air does clear at least somewhat, giving decent visibility across substantial distances.

There are also substantial problem with assuming that a major fraction of the blue/green wavelengths would be absorbed by "constant" dust in the atmosphere... one, the solar cells would stop providing nearly the power levels that they need to provide, since their primary response range is from blue light, not red.

Two, enough dust to absorb that high of a fraction of the blue and green wavelengths would make the entire surface substantially darker, and since a majority of the light at the surface would necessarily have to be scattered light, we wouldn't see shadows that were nearly so sharp as we do.

As I recall, Viking only noted two or three significant dust storms over a three-year span. Yes, they happen, but it's not like it's wall-to-wall dust storms 24x7.

We also see from orbital photographs that the sky is quite often very clear... the surface is not habitually hidden due to some wall-to-wall murky haze. A predominant number of orbital pictures are remarkably crisp, indicating that the intervening atmosphere is (relatively) clear. A majority of the obscuration of surface pictures seems to come from water-ice clouds.

NASA's own folks (and many other respected science outlets) have said for some time that they would not be at all surprised to find a blue sky on Mars... why then are you expressing mock amusement towards those who agree with them? The supposition of a blue sky typically appearing on Mars is utterly reasonable.

Here are a couple of quick references. You could have found them yourself if you had bothered to Google the subject and invest a couple of minutes in actual learning... a pity that a smirk and a dismissal is so much easier to throw out there.

From the John Baez Physics FAQ:
"The colour of the Mars sky will change according to weather conditions. It should be blue when there have been no recent storms, but it will be darker than the earth's daytime sky because of Mars' thinner atmosphere."

From a Hubble Telescope press release just before the landing of Pathfinder (if you read the article, you'll notice that Jim Bell from Cornell was involved here... the same fellow in charge of the color balancing for the Rovers):

"If dust diffuses to the landing site, the sky could turn out to be pink like that seen by Viking," says Philip James of the University of Toledo. "Otherwise, Pathfinder will likely show blue sky with bright clouds."

There is a well-researched paper by Ron and Gilbert Levin which examines the color calibration issue. It is excellent reading for those interested in actually educating themselves on the subject, instead of just flinging mockery. It does a good job of poking holes in the "conventional wisdom" explanation about suspended dust vs. Rayleigh scattering.




[Edited on 1-30-2004 by BarryKearns]

Oh, and for what it's worth... here's an "approximate true color" image covering some of the same terrain, but constructed with data from the RED, green, and blue filters, instead of the infrared (using L4-L5-L6 instead of L2-L5-L6):



Interested parties are free to combine the raw data themselves, and see what the red, green, blue combination looks like. Since NASA has still failed to produce a set of shots that include both the calibration tool and a decent portion of the terrain in the same shot (using L4-L5-L6), any color balance adjustments would be speculative at best... for a proper and much more exact balancing, it is incument upon NASA to take the described (necessary) shots, and release the raw data.

Personally, I find this natural (raw) balance to be quite reasonable, as are most pictures of known objects produced by a raw mix of the L4-L5-L6 filters. They are not exact, of course, but we already know that the L2-L5-L6 data is "off", so I'm comfortable with this representation being "closer" to reality.

Of course, if NASA ever gets around to finally producing and releasing data that will allow a reasonable independent VERIFICATION of the actual surface colors in the human vision range (as described above), we'll all know for sure.


[Edited on 1-30-2004 by BarryKearns]

Nice is that from your photoshop job or image file from nasa? I never said that I agreed that , that was the TRUE color. great i cant wait for the release of more pics.

I know its my imagination, but i think the far right looks like Dino tail. looks like bone. im sure its not.

Originally posted by Kriskaos
Nice is that from your photoshop job or image file from nasa? I never said that I agreed that , that was the TRUE color. great i cant wait for the release of more pics.

That's a simple RGB combination of NASA's raw image data, with the following filenames released from Sol004:

1P128542307EFF0205P2354L4M1.jpeg
1P128542417EFF0205P2354L5M1.jpeg
1P128542483EFF0205P2354L6M1.jpeg

I wouldn't really call that a "photoshop job", since that implies (to me at least) that alterations and/or color adjustments have been made.

None have been made in the above picture. It's a straight bit-for-bit combination of NASA's own red, green and blue filter data.

If you try comparing L2 frames to L4 frames in these sequences, you'll see that the rocks and portions of the soil show up substantially brighter in infrared than in red... which points out why the use of the L2 filter is inappropriate in this case, unless you happen to be someone who sees in infrared but NOT human-red. The use of L2 makes the red signal too bright.

Images of US soldiers in Iraq during a sandstorm.









The coloration is due to dust in whatever passes for atmosphere on Mars. I don't think there's much more to it.

Yes, those are all good examples of the types of color differences present while in the midst of a sandstorm... and I already referenced above that the colors would be different during and immediately after a sandstorm.

But we also know that sandstorms are not constant on Mars, and know that there are constraints on just how much blue and green light must be present to ensure the operation of the solar cells.

Visibility is much better in a lot of Mars pictures than in the sandstorm pictures above. Once the density of particulates drops enough to ensure that we are getting good power levels and good visibility, it is no longer possible for the majority of light at the surface to be scattered/reflected red light from particulates.

We therefore know that the sky is often relatively clear, and would expect only the sort of typical minor particulate haze that people expect as normal in terrain shots taken over large distances.

Distant objects will appear more hazy, and the sky will wash towards a whitish color near the horizon, where the visible distance through the haze is greatest. As the view is shifted upward, the haze effect naturally falls off and "sky color" begins to dominate.

There is simply no compelling reason to expect that the dominant feature in Martian surface lighting is ALWAYS red reflected light from particulates. The other evidence rules this out as a reasonable explanation.

Hubble photographs also strongly indicate that the atmospheric "limb" of Mars shows as blue, not red as would be expected if the predominant atmospheric color effect is due to suspended particulates. These shots are taken through the MAXIMUM atmospheric cross-section (a tangent to the surface at the edge of the planet), so any particulate coloration should be MORE intense on Hubble images, rather than less intense or non-existent.