I took three images from the raw frames available on JPL's Mars Rover web site and created a color image. They are not the fully correct colors: I used the "near-IR" (750nm) filter for red, green for green, and the UV (or short-pass 430nm) filter for blue. Opportunity Color filter IDs are from Mars Rover Pancam Filter Specs. I sharpened the image and slightly reduced the cyan content. Colors are, as you should always suspect, suspect. Click on the image above to get the full 1024x1024 image.
Cabo Frio, as the cliff is now called, as synthesized by JPL: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08806
ReplyDeleteAnd make sure to see the Victoria Crater panorama in great color here.
Why is the sky so blue? It looks like earth. All of the other photos I see form mars are orange.
ReplyDeleteThe 'blue' in this image was actually the UV filter, and the 'red' was actually near-infrared. This can skew the color significantly. I even removed some of the overwhelmingly cyan cast from the image. The sky of Mars does in fact look orangish during midday because of all the dust in the atmosphere.
ReplyDeleteI made another mars color image here.
ReplyDeleteDean, most people know by now that NASA plublished by mistake some of the very first color pictures from Mars showing the blue skies in newpapaers. Next day they posted the same pics with red skies (altered). The rocks show a pattern of water errosion(spongyform), and of course this fact hasn't been hidden from the public,NASA theorizing that long time ago MArs had an atmosphere and oceans. The truth is that even though the atmosphere is very thin now and the polar ice caps still hold water, the atmosphere is there dear sir.
ReplyDeleteYou either filtered a photo that had been color-altered by NASA first in order to make it different...or something else ;)
Of course even here on earth skies are reddish sometimes and dusty (especially in Arizona during dust storms)..and sometimes they're blue. By the way NASA rushed to publish different pictures next day that year because they realized that the blue sky drew a lot of attention from the common people, which raised questions.
Good luck with your job.
ReplyDeleteI recall well myself seeing the first Viking images in 1976, complete with blue sky (this was a big event for us, because we'd had to listen to the first moon landing on the radio since New Zealand didn't have a satellite receiving station in 1969).
I was 15 at the time, and I also remember quite clearly when the corrected versions were released shortly afterwards.