Mars Rover Picture Analysis Discussion

Originally posted by jra
Forgive my lack of understanding, but how does slight changes of colour make something appear to be more expensive? Firstly, colonization would be expensive. It doesn't matter what colour the yellow cables look like on Mars.

Well it looked like a rather significant change in colour to me. Mabye your filters are not set up well? Feel free to qualify why you think different atmosphering conditions do not impact colonization efforts.

One also has to remember that both the photos you showed are taken in very differnt lighting conditions.

No two things are every under the exact same lighting condtions so i am unsure what your point is. We know how blue changing to red and yellow/gold changing to red and do not think that matters? You do not see a pattern forming?

Take an object outside durring a sunset when the light is closer to orange and take a photo of it. Then bring that same object into a bright, white room lit with bright flourecent lights. You'll see a big difference in colour. That and NASA's 'true colour' photos are an approximation, they even say so.

Thanks for the advice; i never considered that things might look different under different lighting conditions.

Also, just what is this "primary military orientated mission" that NASA is supposedly going on with? You don't think NASA wants to go to Mars?

If NASA wanted to go to mars they would no be tampering with the colours and they would not be wasting money trying to maitain a vastly inefficient shuttle system. It is quite clear that they do not want to spend their money efficiently.

Stellar

Originally posted by StellarX
Well it looked like a rather significant change in colour to me. Mabye your filters are not set up well? Feel free to qualify why you think different atmosphering conditions do not impact colonization efforts.

Of course different atmospheric conditions affect colonization efforts. But that's not what we were talking about. You were talking about NASA altering colours to make it seem more expensive to go there, which makes no sense to me.

No two things are every under the exact same lighting condtions so i am unsure what your point is. We know how blue changing to red and yellow/gold changing to red and do not think that matters? You do not see a pattern forming?

By lighting conditions, I meant natural light compaired to flourecent. Also the filters they used on the cameras wern't a perfect red, blue or green. I believe the red filter was a near infra-red filter. That will affect how the colours turn out. Like I said before. They are an 'approximate true colour'. NASA even says so on each and every colour photo. There will always be some errors in colour.

If NASA wanted to go to mars they would no be tampering with the colours and they would not be wasting money trying to maitain a vastly inefficient shuttle system. It is quite clear that they do not want to spend their money efficiently.

Well I agree that they don't spend there money efficiently, but that's just what happens when the beurocarcy becomes too bloated in my opinion.

Originally posted by jra
Of course different atmospheric conditions affect colonization efforts. But that's not what we were talking about. You were talking about NASA altering colours to make it seem more expensive to go there, which makes no sense to me.

It will not be more expensive to go as such but the perception will be created in the public mind that it is. If Mars looked like your regular desert on Earth people would imagine it so much easier and wont put up with Nasa excuses. In my opinion it's really just a game to alter public perception and make it easier for senators/Nasa to allocate less and less money to Mars exploration.

By lighting conditions, I meant natural light compaired to flourecent. Also the filters they used on the cameras wern't a perfect red, blue or green.

Wich i have always found rather strange. The very first pictures from Mars showed us a blue sky and ever so often something goes "wrong" and we get the blue sky again. It's like the test for life wich tested positive only to be called a mistake soon afterwards. Are they just bad or are they simply finding things that they were told not to find? Why so many filtering processes when we got a blue sky the very first time? What's the odds of that being a accident?

I believe the red filter was a near infra-red filter. That will affect how the colours turn out. Like I said before. They are an 'approximate true colour'. NASA even says so on each and every colour photo. There will always be some errors in colour.

Well i am sure they can track down the errors had they wanted to and putting a disclaimer on your photo's where they are all clearly #ed to a certain colour is hardly fooling me. What does "aproximately" mean in NASA's dictionary anyways?

Well I agree that they don't spend there money efficiently, but that's just what happens when the beurocarcy becomes too bloated in my opinion.

Well i no longer assume people in such prominent positions to be simply stupid,ignorent or otherwise impaired so i refuse to believe the massive waste and inefficiency is simply due to mismanagement. I for one think it is a deliberate effort to waste money and slow down exploration for some reason. The Russians are doing so much more with much less funding so one has to ask what is going on.

Stellar

[edit on 19-1-2006 by StellarX]

NASA may not be deliberately altering colours, but accepting that doesn't mean the rover images should be trusted as having accurate colours. I'd much rather trust the Viking images.. afterall, they were film shots not digital. Just look at the difference..

Viking view
Spirit view

Originally posted by SteveR
NASA may not be deliberately altering colours, but accepting that doesn't mean the rover images should be trusted as having accurate colours.

And this is why NASA lables those images as "Approximate true colour"

I'd much rather trust the Viking images.. afterall, they were film shots not digital.

I don't think that would make too much of a difference. The Viking images were taken through various filters, just like the current Mars rovers. And then combined to get those colour images. The Viking images are no more exact then the current rover images.

links on Viking images:

mars.spherix.com...

The Viking cameras have six spectrally narrow band detectors, three in the visible and three in the near infrared. The use of all six channels has been shown (Huck et al., 1977) to provide the most accurate color rendition. Because many of the images in our study had not been taken in six channels, three component color reconstruction was used. The three components correspond approximately to Blue, Green, and Red. The color reconstruction of these images was performed in a "radiometric" sense, meaning that the components were each linearly amplified to effect an equal average sensitivity over the spectral bandpass. Therefore, the reconstructed triplet, while possessing the same general color characteristics, is not intended to be an exact photometric reproduction of the actual sense as perceived by a human observer

www.msss.com...

Viking color images of the martian surface suffer from a variety of uncertainties, in particular the relative brightness of the "red" and "blue" channels. Early reconstructions of the Viking lander images tended to show "blue" sky, while later reconstructions, trying to account for out-of-band contributions in each filter, tended to show a "red" sky, and often an "orange" surface. Owing to calibration uncertainties, the exact reconstruction of Viking Lander color images remains more or less an art.

Kano... I was linked to this thread only recently so I realize its a few years old now...

but in case you are still around I have a question...

The photo clip in the OP... it's from a Lockheed Martin study not a NASA report... yet I saw no mention of this nor a link to the entire document...

Color Calibration of Spirit and Opportunity Rover Images
Ron L. Levin*, Lockheed Martin IS&S, Building 5, 1300 S. Litchfield Road,
Goodyear, AZ 85338-1599

ABSTRACT
The controversy about color Mars lander image calibration, begun in 1976 during the Viking mission, continues with the 2004 Spirit and Opportunity missions. Officially released color images at web site “Photojournal.JPL.NASA.Gov” continue to show wide variation. Two sets of filters are used by NASA to produce color images from Spirit. One conventional set of red, green and blue filters has been used for images of the calibration chart alone and small pieces of the soil. Another set of infra-red, green and blue filters is used for larger panoramic images. While most objects in the Martian scene are not affected by this change, the appearance of the color calibration chart changes drastically. An extreme example of this can be found in the comparison of the blue color panel using the two different sets of filters. When the blue panel is seen in the panorama images, it appears to be bright red. Small blue wire ties on the rover also appear to be bright red in the panoramas. NASA claims that the blue color panel is unusually reflective in the near infra-red. This makes inspection of the color balance more difficult and many problems exist in published “true color” images. This paper will round up this and other issues involving Spirit color image calibration.

mars.spherix.com...

Now the most interesting thing in that document to me was the FINAl image in the paper... the one showing LM's opinion of the results of the color filters..



Personally I go with this image for a more realistic color...



Based on the comparison of the Vesicular Basalt in the photo... that looks pretty close to what I see here in Nevada..








Hmmm and for this elevated status and a from NASA



[edit on 27-4-2008 by zorgon]