First Picture From New Mars Lander

[Z'ha'dum]

[TacoMan5000]

I was certain this was going to be the McDonald's one.

[spydusse]

The sky on Mars should actually have a blue tint to it but they doctor the photos so the sky looks red. When i say ''they'' i have no idea who they are but the sky should be blue there. Picture from viking one

[TacoMan5000]

The sky on Mars should actually have a blue tint to it but they doctor the photos so the sky looks red. When i say ''they'' i have no idea who they are but the sky should be blue there. Picture from viking one

Most likely because it looks too much like a spot on Earth; the unaltered image could have been taken in just about any desert on our planet. They want it too look more strange and alien to garner more interest.

[AnthonyTheAbyss]

Most likely because it looks too much like a spot on Earth; the unaltered image could have been taken in just about any desert on our planet. They want it too look more strange and alien to garner more interest.

Is that the actual reason or is that your opinion (real question...not bashing your answer)? I find it hard to believe they need to do more to get people interested in this. Landing a car on a distant planet is already pretty cool. Isn't there a scientific reason for altering the pictures?

[Komitadjie]

I'm not sure about the imaging system on Curiosity, but on Spirit and Opportunity, the colour was derived from overlaying four photos, each one with a different filter over the camera lens, as I understand. A LOT of space photos have the colour artificially added, since high-res full-colour photos are ridiculously data-intensive, and the datalinks back to earth typically are fairly slow and low-bandwidth.

Incidentally, are you sure that Viking-1 was using a colour camera, or was it a black-and-white that had the colour added at this end?

EDIT: Looks like Viking used the same three-filter system, where it sent three black-and-white filtered frames back, which were converted into colour data and overlaid to make a single frame of near-colour imagery. Curiosity has a full-colour camera. I'd attribute the differences, then, to differences in the way the images were taken and composited.

[knifezoid]

Some more footage:

[TacoMan5000]

Is that the actual reason or is that your opinion (real question...not bashing your answer)? I find it hard to believe they need to do more to get people interested in this. Landing a car on a distant planet is already pretty cool. Isn't there a scientific reason for altering the pictures?

I was guessing, but it does happen. Komitadjie's thought also occurred to, a side effect of the imagine system used. It wouldn't be the first times images like this were subtly altered to make them more interesting, though. I wonder how white balance works on Mars?

[Komitadjie]

I was actually just thinking that and chuckling when I had a photo set printed about an hour ago, Tacoman! Specifically, I was thinking "I wonder if their camera has a "MARS" white-balance setting on it."

[Komitadjie]

Ah, I actually just saw an explanation from NASA for why the colour is so odd. The picture was apparently taken by the colour camera at the end of the manipulator arm, which is still stowed. The camera lens cover hasn't been ejected yet, and the fuzz and odd colour in the first released picture is due to the lens cap being covered with dust from the skyhook's downblast.

[TacoMan5000]

Ah, I actually just saw an explanation from NASA for why the colour is so odd. The picture was apparently taken by the colour camera at the end of the manipulator arm, which is still stowed. The camera lens cover hasn't been ejected yet, and the fuzz and odd colour in the first released picture is due to the lens cap being covered with dust from the skyhook's downblast.

That is a much cooler explanation.

[supersuby]

Some more footage: