Why do all the pictures on mars?

Question

Why do all the pics of mars that are shown have to color extracted or why dont they show the real colors?

Answer 1

Digital imaging systems such as those used on the Mars probes can only capture monochrome images. Colour images are assembled by having different filters in front of the CCD, and then the information from each monochrome image is coloured and combined electronically (even your digital camera works that way, believe it or not). If you get the ratios wrong you end up with false colour images, and in some cases these are actually of more use for the scientists analysing the pictures. However, most pictures are true colour.



When the first colour images from the Viking Landers came back they initially compiled the images incorrectly, because they assumed the martian sky would be blue. They assembled the images with colour ratios skewed heavily to the blue range to achieve this. It was only later when other things came into the images that they realised they had the colour ratios wrong and corrected them.

Answer 2

It's true that many imagers on Mars don't use our colour palette (RGB ish) but instead they use filters to optimize the science that comes out from an image.



No artist 'colours in' the images received, from, say the MER rovers.



Quoting http://areo.info/mer/



"Note, that the color images are created automatically from all raw color data available. That means, there are also images which do not represent true color as they have been taken with filters outside the wavelength range of the human eye. "



Simply, the human eye is not the best kind of camera to take to Mars - the 'film' of the eye (the retina) isn't optimized for distinguishing between n shades of brown and red. So, the MER rovers have imagers (broadband) with filter wheels infront, that allow the scientists to image Mars at very specific colours, which we don't have pigments for in our retina.



So to us a scene may appear 100% reddish brown. But a filtered view would reveal more contrast and thus better clarity - and better data for science.



You can reconstruct 'true colour' images based on these separate filtered views, and that's exactly what has been done for 30 or so years of Mars science - but it's done automatically by algorithms, not by hand (!).

Answer 3

RGB images are taken through filters that let through a limited range of wavelengths of electromagnetic energy. A "true color" RGB digital image is "color extracted" only by the limitations of wavelengths of the red, blue, and green filters. The same thing is true for an IR filter or the filters of Thematic Mapper 4, 5, and 7 seven band/channel satellite images.

Answer 4

Those _are_ the real colours on Mars! Jim Bell, who produces most of the images from Spirit and Opportunity goes to a lot of trouble to match colours using the colour wheel mounted on the rovers' deck. For details, see his book "Postcards From Mars" -- great book, by the way!

Answer 5

what does "color extracted" mean?



the pictures are assembled from monochrome images taken through colour filters, standard practice in scintific imaging. the intent is maximum detail and contrast of interesting things. pretty pictures are secondary. eyes evolved on earth may miss important detail.

Answer 6

to get higher quality, most of the time, pictures are taking in black and white. Rather than wasting the camera's resources with color, they'd much rather use it to have the camera take bigger pictures that shows texture and other fine details.

Most of those images that you see of space that are in "color" are actually originally black and white with an artist color shading them.

Answer 7

for attractive