The Chinese Moon Rover offers us a great opportunity!

Unity_99
Now, this is something NASA should realize, COLOR photo's have existed for ages.....WHY DON'T THEY USE COLOR, EH? Apparently China does!

ALL digital color pictures (the ones from NASA, the ones from ESA, the ones from the Chinese space agency, AND even the ones from your home color digital camera) are all based on grayscale/black-and-white images.

All digital CCD (the light sensor on a digital camera) are color blind -- NASA's, China's, and your home camera. They can only "see" in different intensities of grey. To get a digital color image, the scene being photographed goes through various color filters. On your home camera, it is most likely a "bayer" filter. All of the light passes through these color filters and strikes the CCD. The CCD then sees the different intensities of grey scales as seen through the various color filters, then the computer in the camera calculates a "best guess" as to what color the grey scale represents. These calculations are based on how different colors create different grey scale intensities when viewed through color filters.

Wat your camera then gives you is a "color" image -- but that image was created using a black-and-white light sensor.

The difference in many of the images from NASA (such as from the twin mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity) is that the different greyscale images as seen through the different color filers is what is transmitted as raw images back to earth (the raw images from NASA are of the same image taken various times through various filters). The computer algorithms that attempt to figure out which colors are represented by the grey scales is done back at Earth AFTER the raw images are transmitted by the camera. Your home camera does not do thins -- the raw images it gives you have already run through the color algorithms in your home camera's computer.

One reason NASA does this is that more information is locked away in those various black-and-white images seen through different filters. More science can be done by analyzing the grayscale light as seen through different filters than can be done with the combined "color" image.

It should be noted that the Curiosity Rover has the ability to also create a raw image on-board as seen through a bayer filter (much like your home camera), and can thus transmit back a raw images from some of its cameras that have already gone through the color-processing computers -- i.e., raw images showing color, like your home camera.

By the way, film images are different, and Apollo had many film images of from the moon in both black-and-white AND color. Here's an example film magazine list from Apollo 17:

Apollo 17 Image Library

reply to post by alfa1

Q: What colour is the moon?
A: FFS, go outside and look up into the sky and see for yourself!!!1

But they won't believe their eyes until they see something posted on YouTube....

reply to post by DJW001


What very few people realize is that a 2MP B/W CCD camera has more than 3 times the resolution of a 2MP colour CCD. Yes, that is right, that 'crappy' 2MP camera on the mars rover has an effective resolution of better than a 6MP colour camera, amongst other advantages.


If you want to read more about how a colour CCD works, this link gives you more information than a silly youtube video.
Bayer filter

Frankly, I am sick and tired of these threads saying how crappy the cameras on spacecraft or professional telescopes are, because they use 'inferior' BW cameras...

reply to post by Hellhound604


Then why do we get such crappy pictures? Obviously, they're not putting them to good use.

wildespace

P.S. your second image is from a TV camera, right? Because there were only 2 astronauts on the surface, with no one else to take that image. Therefore the image was B&W and was colourised by someone.

edit on 15-12-2013 by wildespace because: (no reason given)

The 2nd image was taken by the 16mm DAC camera mounted in the LM window, which could use colour film.

reply to post by Unity_99


The Surface of the Moon where Apollo 12 * (Correction - 17) Landed is a Grayish Green .



i297.photobucket.com...

reply to post by Restricted


Maybe because there is not a 1gb/s link between the earth and the moon, so they have to send data slowly and higly compressed, and with lots of error correction, that takes a large part of the bandwidth.

Zanti Misfit
reply to post by Unity_99

 

The Surface of the Moon where Apollo 12 Landed is a Grayish Green .



i297.photobucket.com...

That's Apollo 17.

As I said in the other thread, the astronauts reported a variety of colours (mostly browns and greys) depending on the lighting conditions.

The rover is definitely exciting news, I am looking forward to seeing the photos, they said they will share their data with the whole world. By the way people that think we didn't go to the Moon are fools, that's not the part that NASA covered up.

alfa1
Q: What colour is the moon?
A: FFS, go outside and look up into the sky and see for yourself!!!1

You will see a silvery-gray moon (not counting any atmospheric effects making it yellow or orange). However, use binoculars, and you can see some slate-blue in the dark maria (especially the sea of Tranquility). Use a telescope, and you can see a whole variety of bluish and reddish locations. Take a photo and enhance colours, and the Moon suddenly becomes very colourful.

Zanti Misfit
reply to post by Unity_99

 

The Surface of the Moon where Apollo 12 * (Correction - 17) Landed is a Grayish Green .



i297.photobucket.com...

edit on 15-12-2013 by Zanti Misfit because: (no reason given)

Here's a version from the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal (www.hq.nasa.gov...) with saturation increased slightly:

Interesting variation of greenish and blueish plains and the reddish hills.

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, some of the actual Apollo film rolls had a pronounced colour cast that doesn't reflect the actual colour of the Moon, so it has to be corrected for. Here's a scan of the film roll where the above photo appears: www.hq.nasa.gov...
Some of the Apollo 11 film rolls are brown, and Apollo 16 rolls are blue (www.hq.nasa.gov...).

Article discussing colour on the Moon and the issue with the film rolls: www.hq.nasa.gov...

originally posted by: ngchunter

Restricted
reply to post by colddeadhands

 

Isn't it interesting that the surface is red? Thanks NASA. We had to get the truth from China.

You know, you can look up in the sky and see for yourself that it isn't red. Amazing, people will believe something that is easily and first-hand demonstrably false as long as it is perceived to "conflict with NASA."

Wow! Your response is so idiotic that it gave me cancer.
You're telling me that by simply observing an object from a really far distance, I can detail its colour? So stars are actually white?
What I find amazing is that you actually think its that simple. Ya uh huh. I, I...really hope you're just kidding around.

originally posted by: circaenterprise

originally posted by: ngchunter

Restricted
reply to post by colddeadhands

 

Isn't it interesting that the surface is red? Thanks NASA. We had to get the truth from China.

You know, you can look up in the sky and see for yourself that it isn't red. Amazing, people will believe something that is easily and first-hand demonstrably false as long as it is perceived to "conflict with NASA."

Wow! Your response is so idiotic that it gave me cancer.
You're telling me that by simply observing an object from a really far distance, I can detail its colour? So stars are actually white?
What I find amazing is that you actually think its that simple. Ya uh huh. I, I...really hope you're just kidding around.

Yep. You can look at the stars here on Earth, with your very own eyes and see different colors for those stars.

Not all stars appear white. Take a good look at Betelgeuse in the Orion constellation. Very orange/red looking (and it's a red giant, how about that?).

Rigel in the same constellation: blue/white (guess what color it is?)