NASA Colorizes Its Photos

These all use the word "colorized" in a broad, popular sense. In no way was
any color arbitrarily added to these images---that is, in the way that, say,
an old black and white movie would be colorized, or an old family photo
tinted. It is simpler to use this word than "color enhancement", which is
really what is going on but requires more explanation. Several of the
websites you quote (and please note that most of these are not NASA sites)
do include an explanation of what they mean by the word "colorize": that the
colors were manipulated for scientific purposes. I take it you just listed
everything you could find with the words "NASA" and "colorize" in them, but
did not bother to read what you found?

What you are trying to establish, I take it, is that NASA takes B&W images
and "fakes" the color in them. This is not the case at all. And before you
ask: this is something about which I have considerable experience. I am an
author and illustrator specializing in astronomical subjects (my most recent
series of books just received the 2003 American Institute of Physics Award
of Excellence for Science Writing). As an illustrator, I have worked with
NASA imaging and imagery for 30 years and have intimate knowledge of the
processes involved. I have handled the raw images as they have come directly
from the spacecraft and know precisely what happens to them in the process
of enhancement and why this enhancement is done (for one thing, it is
important to me when creating an illustration to depict a place as it really
looks and not as it appears in an enhanced image). There are a vast number
of ways in which the information contained in a photo can be extracted by
such manipulation, some of which involve converting portions of a B&W image
into color by means of filters, computers, etc. But this is done in order to
enhance features for scientific study, not to introduce arbitrary colors.
Perhaps the closet that NASA comes to doing what you seem to want to prove
is in many of its radar images of the surface of Venus, which are often
reproduced in an overall orangish-yellow tint.

RM

"Flying _Naked_People" http://www.rcip.com/nerdgerl/email.htm wrote in
message ...
APOD: June 12, 1999 - Venus: Just Passing By
... Each day a different image or photograph of our ... Venus: Just
Passing By
Credit: Galileo Project, JPL, NASA. ... This colorized image of Venus was
recorded by the ...
antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990612.html cached | more results from this
site

Etc. etc.