Movie: NASA Sites on Mars for Future Landings

Hi! I was checking out THIS article about a "movie" called Mapping MARS It's nothing more then a couple seconds Quicktime of the surface. I must say, has anyone else noticed the strange purple colour on the surface of most of the planet? Seems odd, should it not be airbrushed!

reply to post by anhinga


What is it you are actually asking?

it's spelled out right there!

got any photos/links of some more crazy purple terrain on MARS?!

[edit on 26-10-2007 by anhinga]

Having read the article quickly it seems clear that geologists are using colour as a way of determining height. The region, Syrtis Major is a vast plain, north of the vast Hellas basin. Both are visible with a telescope, the V shaped Syrtis Major being one of the first features ever seen on Mars through a telescope and recorded. It has variation of colour and intensity. Quite a feature.

reply to post by anhinga


It's a false color image.

NASA can assign any color they want to different lighting intensities of the raw black-and-white image, so they can make something look purple or green when the actual color of the material may just be brownish-orange. They make things dirrent colors so different materials can stand out from other materials to make it easy to study those materials. That's what the article is about -- studying Mars using color.

In fact all the photos from Mars (the rovers and MRO/HiRISE) are in false color. A digital camera's raw image is always in black-and-white. Different filters are used to measure the light's intensity (not color) and a computer inside the camera uses this intensity information to guess at the color. ALL digital cameras work this way (even yours). a color digital picture is just an approximation of real colors, as determined by a computer chip in the camera. Sometimes NASA releases a photo that they label as "approximate true color". These images are NASA's best guess at the actual colors. Sometimes they release an image that shows different light intensities as purple, blue, or green soto help them tell different material apart (even though they all may be roughly the same color.)