Evidence that NASA is altering the true colours of the pictures of Mars

Originally posted by Yoda411

Originally posted by RFBurns

The L1/L2 and L7 filters, along with the R1 through R7 filters, provide a very good means to identify chemical elements and their composition within the geology of the planet by looking at them in these spectral ranges. Normal visible ranges dont give us enough information as the IR bands and UV bands can provide.

If the filters do such an awesome job with identification of chemical elements, than what was the need for the scoop and portable mineral test lab that was attached to the craft?

Could we not have used that weight/solar power for the HD imagery as Phage has mentioned?

Yes it could have. Given the camera is capable of sending a hi-def image, again even a black and white hi-def image would use alot of power and memory to store the image, then send the huge data file out to Earth.

A good example is one of NASA's high resolution images from any of the probes and rovers. They usually store those in tif format. I have downloaded images as big as 300+mb in size! And those were mostly black and white images.

But as I pointed out previously, we dont need a hi def photo to see real color. All we need are the proper filters on the filter cap. Wider bandwidth filters would have provided us with a closer to real color photo than the exsisting narrow bandwidth filters. And the camera can be set to take hi res images, medium res images and low res images. Its not a camera that is incapable of having different resolution settings. In fact it was designed to have different resolutions so that they can get varying results on the geological images.

Even a low resolution image with wideband RGB filters to get a close to true color image at 320x240 would be good enough to know that there are more colors to Mars than just red! But it wouldnt be bad at all to see a nice hi-def image in wide bandwidth RGB either!!




Cheers!!!!

reply to post by RFBurns


Again, I think it's a practical consideration. Narrow bandpass filters aid mineral identification in the visible wavelengths as well as UV and infrared. Wide band filters are not as useful.

Decisions. Add this, dump that. There wasn't room for it all. Ah, what's three more filters? Well, three more pieces of glass (or whatever), a larger wheel, more weight, a little more power to turn the wheel.

[edit on 12/15/2008 by Phage]

Originally posted by Yoda411


Could we not have used that weight/solar power for the HD imagery as Phage has mentioned?

The infrared imagery shows the distribution of minerals within the geologic structure and rocks. Layering and whatnot. This kind of information tells us about the history of the planet.

[edit on 12/15/2008 by Phage]

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by RFBurns

 

Again, I think it's a practical consideration. Narrow bandpass filters aid mineral identification in the visible wavelengths as well and UV and infrared. Wide band filters are not as useful.

Decisions. Add this, dump that. There wasn't room for it all. Ah, what's three more filters? Well, three more pieces of glass (or whatever), a larger wheel, more weight, a little more power to turn the wheel.

[edit on 12/15/2008 by Phage]

Well considering the price at 15-20 mil for each mission, adding another 200 thou to add wider filters, and no you dont need a bigger filter wheel for that, you simply put widebandwidth filters where the narrow bandwidth filters are, and its easier to cut bandwidth data from a wide set than it is to try to get wide from narrow at the end, so that really is a mute point about a bigger filter wheel with the added weight and room and more power issue Phage. You know darn well that with algorithyms at the end point, its far easier to narrow spectral response curves from wide response curves than it is to go the opposite direction. If it was easy to go in reverse, then right now we could get true color from those narrow filters!!



Cheers!!!!

Originally posted by RFBurns

Well considering the price at 15-20 mil for each mission, adding another 200 thou to add wider filters, and no you dont need a bigger filter wheel for that, you simply put widebandwidth filters where the narrow bandwidth filters are, and its easier to cut bandwidth data from a wide set than it is to try to get wide from narrow at the end, so that really is a mute point about a bigger filter wheel with the added weight and room and more power issue Phage. You know darn well that with algorithyms at the end point, its far easier to narrow spectral response curves from wide response curves than it is to go the opposite direction. If it was easy to go in reverse, then right now we could get true color from those narrow filters!!
Cheers!!!!

Actually I don't know if it's easier or even possible to get the same effect with software. It seems that if it were, there would be no need for narrow band filters at all.

Remember, the sensors don't see color. The wide band (and narrow band) images only carry brightness values not spectral values, they are grayscale. The reason for the narrow band is to isolate selected wavelengths. A wide band filter cannot do that.


BTW, scratch what I said about the extra power to turn the filter wheel. That's silly. Substitute a larger housing. They "need" the narrow band filters. Wide band filters would be additional.

Actually they could have made the camera aperature smaller, to accomodate a smaller filter hole for each filter, hence more filters to fit within the circumference of the filter wheel on it now. That would allow for more narrow bandwidth filters to "fill in" the gaps between the current filters. Even if they were only able to add 2 more filters, that would expand on the spectral capability and also give them 2 more narrow bandwidth filters to work with.

If the camera aperature couldnt be made smaller, they could have put a simple, straight forward full RGB bandwidth "eye candy" camera smack in between the science cameras.

As yoda, and countless others have pointed out, that type of camera would not have been so out of reach of the mission or budget or data upload time to be able to send back a real color image for public consumption. Again, the public should get more than just a boatload of science stuff when the majority of the public who paid for the hardware and mission, expects something in return for the investment.

It would not have been so far from practical to install such a camera onto the rovers than it is to install wider filters and use spectral bandwidth filters on the back end, which is easily done btw, than it is to not have those options to start with and spend so much time and money convincing us that what we want as the paying public is "not scientific".

Did NASA take a public vote and come to the conclusion that the public voted to spend 20 million on a rover mission just for science and the select few?

If they did, Id like to see it.




Cheers!!!!

[edit on 15-12-2008 by RFBurns]

Back to the images.

Here is one made from the Sol 004 dataset found HERE. It is of the NASA emblem and the US flag on a module on the Opportunity rover, probably one of the computer modules judging by the connectors.



Full size HERE.


Curious...wiith all that radiation on Mars...one would think that the wire harnesses and especially the connectors, would be a bit more shielded, like perhaps in braided wire tubing and grounded shields around the connectors. Think of all that dust out there! Heck its hard to keep the dust from my computer's vent holes every week, I can imagine how much dust might get into these connectors and wires!!



Cheers!!!!

Here is Spirit's module box and US flag. Not sure why there isnt a big NASA emblem on this module, its identical to the Opportunity module, but a little variance is never a bad thing!

From Sol 003 found HERE.



Full size HERE.





Cheers!!!!

[edit on 15-12-2008 by RFBurns]

Originally posted by RFBurns

Did NASA take a public vote and come to the conclusion that the public voted to spend 20 million on a rover mission just for science and the select few?

If they did, Id like to see it.




Cheers!!!!

[edit on 15-12-2008 by RFBurns]

No, not on the technical aspects. But there is voting on the funding. No results, no funding. Congress could still cancel the Mars Science Laboratory.

The purpose of all of NASA's missions is science. Sometimes the science produces pretty pictures. When it does, NASA is more than happy to show it them to us. But the huge amounts of data? Yeah, it takes scientists to understand and interpret it.

[edit on 12/15/2008 by Phage]

Originally posted by RFBurns


Curious...wiith all that radiation on Mars...one would think that the wire harnesses and especially the connectors, would be a bit more shielded, like perhaps in braided wire tubing and grounded shields around the connectors. Think of all that dust out there! Heck its hard to keep the dust from my computer's vent holes every week, I can imagine how much dust might get into these connectors and wires!!

It's all been working pretty damn well for almost 5 years now. I don't think they picked the parts up at CompUSA.

Originally posted by Phage

Originally posted by RFBurns
Curious...wiith all that radiation on Mars...one would think that the wire harnesses and especially the connectors, would be a bit more shielded, like perhaps in braided wire tubing and grounded shields around the connectors. Think of all that dust out there! Heck its hard to keep the dust from my computer's vent holes every week, I can imagine how much dust might get into these connectors and wires!!

It's all been working pretty damn well for almost 5 years now. I don't think they picked the parts up at CompUSA.

Good point Phage.

As for the issue of Hard Disk space if they had attached an HD Digital Camera - are you arguing that the MRA panoramic pictures (7 slides for 1 colored picture) do not take up a massive amount of hard disk space?

It seems even a 2 Mega Pixel camera such as the extremely tiny ones used in modern cell phones would help in determining the accuracy of the colored MRA photography. Even if modern day geologists use this professional MRA photography on Earth - who is to say it will work the same way with the different atmospheric conditions on Mars?

Edit: My stance remains that Mars is a red planet, and I do not believe NASA would intentionally change the color of the surface of a planet. They would be risking exposure years down the road.

[edit on 12/15/08 by Yoda411]

I don't really understand why anyone cares. So they used a bit of photoshop!

Could someone explain why it's such a big deal?

Originally posted by sadisticwoman
I don't really understand why anyone cares. So they used a bit of photoshop!

Could someone explain why it's such a big deal?

It's a big deal (I can't believe I'm explaining this AGAIN!) because Nasa is funded by the public. They should provide images that the public can digest and find pleasing to the eye alongside the scientific data sets they already produce. It wasn't a "little photoshop" that Nasa used, you are missing the point entirely. What they have done is produced images for the public to download and look at that aren't representing what the surface would look like to the naked eye.

Releasing colour real photos can work in Nasa's favour because they are in need of funding. Nasa used to captivate the hearts and minds of the world with their advancements that everyday people could understand and be excited about.

For instance, if I showed one of those images from Nasa of a baron Mars that is infra-red and completely red-washed to an 8 year old, do you think those images would captivate his/her mind? My little brother for one would say it looked boring. Now if the image was shown in colour in order to demonstrate that their are far off lands that are reachable but not of this world. I'm sure the colour image would be a better tool at getting their imagination going and to inspire them to be a scientist, engineer, astronaut, etc, better than the boring red images the publish.

My stance remains that Mars is a red planet, and I do not believe NASA would intentionally change the color of the surface of a planet. They would be risking exposure years down the road.

It IS a red planet, it is known as THE red planet and chances are it will never stop being referred to as the red planet as that is the nick name earned from our observations of the planet.

Earth is known as the "big blue planet" in terms of colour and would glow blue if you viewed it through a telescope from Mars. We know that the land can appear as green from a plane, but if we were standing in that location there would probably be different colour rocks, etc in between the greenery.

In truth, Mars is mostly red. However, not EVERYTHING is red. I for one believe that Mars could have a light blue atmosphere sometimes with rocks of various gradients, textures and colours on the surface.

In conclusion, we KNOW that the images in which EVERYTHING appears to be red are false representations of colour. Nasa has made this fact known and never denied it as the images were taken in the infra-red spectrum in order to make it easier for scientific analysis. We do know and even RF has admitted it that his images aren't "true" colour representations of the surface of Mars either. I do, however, believe that they are a lot closer to the appearance of the surface from the human eye if one were to be standing on the planet than the raw infra-red images.

What RF is doing has been explained to you. You have your opinion and that's OK, you are entitled to it. However, you are missing the fundamental reason in which RF is doing what he is doing. He is making an image that is closer to what the surface of Mars looks like to the human eye, rather than images which show the Infra-red spectrum only. The aim of which he has already explained, he is trying to bring an image to the table that is more appealing from an aesthetic point not a scientific point. In my opinion RF's images could be more closer to the appearance on the ground as perceived by the human eye rather than with the infra-red images.

Thanks for all your time and work RF, I don't possess the knowledge to create images like yours but I believe I understand your process, aim and goals in carrying out your work on this topic.

Steve.

Originally posted by Phage

Originally posted by RFBurns


Curious...wiith all that radiation on Mars...one would think that the wire harnesses and especially the connectors, would be a bit more shielded, like perhaps in braided wire tubing and grounded shields around the connectors. Think of all that dust out there! Heck its hard to keep the dust from my computer's vent holes every week, I can imagine how much dust might get into these connectors and wires!!

It's all been working pretty damn well for almost 5 years now. I don't think they picked the parts up at CompUSA.

Well DUH smartass. You know if you two dont have anything worthy other than to redicule this work then please just take your butts right out the door ok.

You are the only two out of the entire ATS community who seem to be having a major bug up the ass about this, and if I am not mistaken, the new T&C rules state something about non-contributing posts or smart aleck remarks such as yours Phage. We can do without it.

Thats been the whole problem with alternative research, you ridicule types have nothing better to do than to come in and start making silly jokes and remarks out of everything.

If all this is so rediculous, so out of your little realm then stay home and tuck yourself under mommies wing so you wont get a blody nose when you go out to play ok.

And btw, both rovers encoutered problems when those dust storms would roll around, and more than once to, and not just over lack of power due to dust on their solar pannels.

Got something worthy to post, then post it, otherwise take your remarks somewhere else.




Cheers!!!!

reply to post by RFBurns


Please don't pull me into Phage's joke, although humorous I am not the one whom contributed it.

Furthermore, my argument exists because using the same photo-editing software that you are using to "develop" these photographs is used to paste pictures of celebrities on naked bodies. There is clearly a large gap between NASA's scientific color extracting development process and combining these images in GIMP.

As it has been pointed out there are 14 filters used to produce one colored photograph. Although we can compose an estimated colored image using 3 slides (representing RGB) they are just that - estimated colors. They are considered gross estimations even using the scientific method in which NASA uses to develop these images using every filter. Given the open possibility for incorrect color development, it is not a far fetched ideal to say NASA may have screwed up in developing the pictures.

I'm not taking sides at this point, however the scientific process in which we are to debunk NASA photography will need to be increased to near-NASA level. Why? It's because if NASA's color composition is an estimation, anything that is compiled using GIMP can be considered a gross estimation.

Originally posted by Yoda411

Good point Phage.

The team gathers once again to hold hands and join forces against the alternative thinking. How impressive.

Originally posted by Yoda411
As for the issue of Hard Disk space if they had attached an HD Digital Camera - are you arguing that the MRA panoramic pictures (7 slides for 1 colored picture) do not take up a massive amount of hard disk space?

It seems even a 2 Mega Pixel camera such as the extremely tiny ones used in modern cell phones would help in determining the accuracy of the colored MRA photography. Even if modern day geologists use this professional MRA photography on Earth - who is to say it will work the same way with the different atmospheric conditions on Mars?

Why shouldnt it work on Mars as it would on Earth. Is there that much effect of your red atmosphere and dirt that much of an effect to cause a 2megpix cam to not function like it would here on Earth? If that were the case, the rovers would be having a hell of a time taking pictures with what they got now.

Originally posted by Yoda411
Edit: My stance remains that Mars is a red planet, and I do not believe NASA would intentionally change the color of the surface of a planet. They would be risking exposure years down the road.

Well who am I to argue with a graphics designer who cant even duplicate NASA's red images properly much less argue about their stance and baseless accusations when they cant even layer 3 images correctly.



Cheers!!!!

reply to post by Yoda411


WRONG!

14 total filters on the filter wheel. 6 of those are IR geology filters. Two are near IR stereo filters, two are solar density filters, one is an empty slot for pure black and white, and finally, 3 are used for RGB, to make the pictures "pretty".

Does your 2 mega pix camera have 6 IR geology filters? Does it have two near IR stereo filters? No. We dont use those color bands to "see" in color, no matter what Phage or anyone else says.

It takes 3 major color bands to reproduce the color range. Red, Green and Blue. A good example of that is the color LCD screen or color CCD imagers or the old CRT tube.

Each have 3, count them, 3 major colors, red, green and blue. These things work together to create the entire color spectrum. We see all the colors by them running at different intensities to produce those colors.

Your 2 mega pixel camera has an imager with 3 major color band filters, red green and blue. And it takes proper color doesnt it? Does it have the other 6 IR filters somewhere in there? Or the two near IR filters?

No it doesnt.

Yet it takes pretty color pictures in its full glory. So the argument that it takes 14 filters across the entire visual spectrum to be able to see color is bogus.

And if mars is just RED as you say, then what do we need RGB for? What do we need 14 filters for to see ONE color???


Think about it




Cheers!!!!

Originally posted by RFBurns
And if mars is just RED as you say, then what do we need RGB for? What do we need 14 filters for to see ONE color???

Now your just being ignorant. I'll still stoop to your level and rephrase the statement.

The mineral compounds which make up the outer layer of the planet mars is red in appearance. Not the awkward color you composed using your method.

Originally posted by Yoda411

Now your just being ignorant. I'll still stoop to your level and rephrase the statement.

The mineral compounds which make up the outer layer of the planet mars is red in appearance. Not the awkward color you composed using your method.

Actually if you even bother to open your eyes and see those images, there is plenty of RED in them, and if you also look closely, that RED is in the ground and has not changed at all, even if you did a side by side comparison to NASA's red images vs my images, the ground, and dust, are all the same RED.

Do a side by side comparison please. And then do a side by side comparison with your incorrect layered image. Then post those for us to see and then explain it. Until then...your just "talkin" and not "walkin".




Cheers!!!!

reply to post by RFBurns


Let me just ask a question surrounding this belief of altered images. If you were right, would that mean that all of the colored NASA Mars images have been altered?

[edit on 12/15/08 by Yoda411]