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Has NASA's MESSENGER gone color blind?



 
 
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  #1  
Old January 19th 08, 11:24 PM posted to sci.space.history, sci.space.policy, sci.skeptic, sci.op-research,rec.photo.digital
BradGuth
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Default Has NASA's MESSENGER gone color blind?

"Has NASA's MESSENGER gone color blind?"
Apparently "Mercury's unseen side now seen!" is only available in
those colors of gray. After all this time, and of our hard earned
loot spent, I'm actually rather disappointed in NASA's MESSENGER. Are
we ever going to see the full visible spectrum scope and photographic
color depth and contrast worth of our digital images, or merely as
limited as to whatever gray pixels they see fit to share in B&W and of
such limited DR to boot?

Of course there's always the full scope of UV and IR spectrums of
colors outside of the human eye response, that as such could also be
easily made available, especially if given the same eyecandy hype as
accomplished on behalf of most everything else that's out of our
reach.

Perhaps it's just little old me deductively wondering, as to exactly
why our spendy MESSENGER color imaging potential is being
intentionally turned off or excluded from public review, and as to why
their CCD dynamic range remains as so dismal.
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sciencePhotos/
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/...p?gallery_id=2
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/...108821596M.png
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/...108826105M.png
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/...26040M_45M.jpg

Thanks to our "no kid left behind" policy, as of prior to CCD camera
imaging perhaps all of 0.1% of Americans even understood what
photographic spectrum sensitivity and the associated DR(dynamic range)
of B&W or color film even meant. Since the advent of commercial/
consumer CCD cameras and the continued dumbing down of America, I'd
say that fewer than 0.0001% (that's one out of a million) of our
supposedly educated population of mostly snookered and thus easily
dumbfounded village idiots have so much as a freaking clue as to what
either factor of spectrum sensitivity or much less that of what DR
means. Of course this is perfectly good news for those of our cloak
and dagger 'Skull and Bones', as well as for all those faith-based
rusemasters within our NASA, and especially on behalf of those
unfiltered Apollo Kodak moments that somehow never managed to get any
such blue saturated images of our naked and physically dark moon like
those recently accomplished by China and Japan with their quality
bandpass filtered optics.

Here's that other one of Venus by way of MESSENGER that's about as
wussy/pastel worth of color and pathetic DR as you can possibly get,
and still having just enough to call it color, especially weird since
most cell phone cameras would have taken a better color image.
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/...=2&image_id=88
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/...ch%20Image.jpg

Remember the Earth flyby, whereas our easily color spectrum corrected
as a dark-golden-brown moon was intentionally kept out of frame and
otherwise as either too physically dark or perhaps it was invisible
due to their intentionally limited DR usage, however the pastel color
and/or dynamic range limited image of Earth looked quite nifty.
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/the_miss...galapagos.html
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/the_miss...lapagos_lg.jpg
http://www.jhuapl.edu/newscenter/pre...005/050826.asp

Is this lack of color imaging all because of Mercury being so gush
darn moon like, with similar crater upon crater morphed terrain and of
a low amount of albedo, but otherwise offering such a deposited and
local mineral rich geology, and subsequently colorful surface as
capably imaged by those spendy mirror optics, whereas at least one of
which having an extremely good set of narrow bandpass filters and/or
spectrum cutoff filters, and with each of those CCD imagers having
such terrific DR(dynamic range of at the very least 4X film and that's
not even including the extra +/- skew of their CCD DR).

So, where exactly are those true colors of Mercury?
Perhaps MESSENGER's color imaging potential can be fixed while on the
fly, prior to eventually returning for their full orbital mission of
mapping Mercury gets under way.

. - Brad Guth
  #2  
Old January 20th 08, 03:05 AM posted to sci.space.history, sci.space.policy, sci.skeptic, sci.op-research,rec.photo.digital
eyeball
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Default Has NASA's MESSENGER gone color blind?

they say the little green men are really gray,so anything is
possible...
  #3  
Old January 20th 08, 05:49 PM posted to sci.space.history, sci.space.policy, sci.skeptic, sci.op-research,rec.photo.digital
Don Stauffer in Minnesota
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Posts: 8
Default Has NASA's MESSENGER gone color blind?

On Jan 19, 4:24 pm, BradGuth wrote:


So, where exactly are those true colors of Mercury?
Perhaps MESSENGER's color imaging potential can be fixed while on the
fly, prior to eventually returning for their full orbital mission of
mapping Mercury gets under way.

. - Brad Guth


Maybe it IS just grey. Think of the moon. They used color cameras
there, and you could see colors on the logos on the astronauts, the
flag, etc. But the landscape was all shades of grey. Much of the
color on Earth is the result of biological activity. On Mars there
apparently was enough oxygen in the atmosphere to oxidize iron, but
there is not a whole lot of color there. So maybe Mercury is like the
moon, and really is just grey. If they have specroscopic sensors,
they can see fine color variations, but these are not what it would
look like to the human eye.
  #4  
Old January 20th 08, 07:25 PM posted to sci.space.history
Vincent D. DeSimone
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Posts: 56
Default Has NASA's MESSENGER gone color blind?

Are
we ever going to see the full visible spectrum scope and photographic
color depth and contrast worth of our digital images, or merely as
limited as to whatever gray pixels they see fit to share in B&W and of
such limited DR to boot?


Yes, we will. As you know, MESSENGER carries the MDIS camera that uses 11
color filters. What we have been seeing are the B&W images of selected
spectrum shots. The magic of combining them into full color images takes
place on the ground. Since weight and cost is very much an issue with these
Discovery missions, the camera was selected to get the most science out, not
just for eye candy. The last of 500 MB of data was only just downloaded; it
will take a little time for the team to combine the shots into full color,
wide-angle panoramas.


  #5  
Old January 20th 08, 07:33 PM posted to sci.space.history,sci.space.policy,sci.skeptic,sci.op-research,rec.photo.digital
du
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Posts: 2
Default Has NASA's MESSENGER gone color blind?


"Don Stauffer in Minnesota" wrote in message
...
On Jan 19, 4:24 pm, BradGuth wrote:


So, where exactly are those true colors of Mercury?
Perhaps MESSENGER's color imaging potential can be fixed while on the
fly, prior to eventually returning for their full orbital mission of
mapping Mercury gets under way.

. - Brad Guth


This was just a flyby. To get as many pictures as you can get, you
wouldn't want to have to screw with all the filters it would take to get
color photos. Color will probably start with the orbital part of the
mission.


  #6  
Old January 20th 08, 08:28 PM posted to sci.space.history,sci.space.policy,sci.skeptic,sci.op-research,rec.photo.digital
Mark Thornton
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Posts: 2
Default Has NASA's MESSENGER gone color blind?

BradGuth wrote:
"Has NASA's MESSENGER gone color blind?"
Apparently "Mercury's unseen side now seen!" is only available in
those colors of gray. After all this time, and of our hard earned
loot spent, I'm actually rather disappointed in NASA's MESSENGER. Are
we ever going to see the full visible spectrum scope and photographic
color depth and contrast worth of our digital images, or merely as
limited as to whatever gray pixels they see fit to share in B&W and of
such limited DR to boot?


The imagers on space probes are usually designed for scientific purposes
and not generating eye candy. This usually means a sensor with a colour
filter wheel. Creating colour images requires post processing which
isn't trivial --- with the probe moving you have to align the images for
each colour. The colour response is also often not well suited to
producing what our eyes would interpret as true colour. I think NASA has
admitted that this last aspect results in poor PR and that future
sensors might include more suitable filters in the set.

Note also that sci.op-research is about Operations Research and nothing
to do with optics.

Mark Thornton
  #7  
Old January 20th 08, 09:21 PM posted to sci.space.history
Pat Flannery
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Posts: 18,465
Default Has NASA's MESSENGER gone color blind?



Vincent D. DeSimone wrote:

Yes, we will. As you know, MESSENGER carries the MDIS camera that uses 11
color filters. What we have been seeing are the B&W images of selected
spectrum shots.


The photos we've been seeing are those using the visible red filter on
the spacecraft.

Pat
  #8  
Old January 20th 08, 09:24 PM posted to sci.space.history,sci.space.policy,sci.skeptic,sci.op-research,rec.photo.digital
Pat Flannery
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Default Has NASA's MESSENGER gone color blind?



du wrote:
This was just a flyby. To get as many pictures as you can get, you
wouldn't want to have to screw with all the filters it would take to get
color photos. Color will probably start with the orbital part of the
mission.


I'm pretty sure this fly-by used all the filters.
Exposure time for each photo certainly didn't need to be much given the
level of illumination provided by the Sun.

Pat
  #9  
Old January 20th 08, 09:49 PM posted to sci.space.history,sci.space.policy,sci.skeptic,sci.op-research,rec.photo.digital
Pat Flannery
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Posts: 18,465
Default Has NASA's MESSENGER gone color blind?



Mark Thornton wrote:

The imagers on space probes are usually designed for scientific
purposes and not generating eye candy. This usually means a sensor
with a colour filter wheel. Creating colour images requires post
processing which isn't trivial --- with the probe moving you have to
align the images for each colour. The colour response is also often
not well suited to producing what our eyes would interpret as true
colour. I think NASA has admitted that this last aspect results in
poor PR and that future sensors might include more suitable filters in
the set.



In the case of MESSENGER, the photos are across a wide part of the
optical spectrum via several filters.
So they will be putting together color images of the planet from this
data fairly shortly.
The main point of the mission is to determine the elemental make-up of
the surface of Mercury by how the various minerals and rocks reflect
sunlight in various parts of the spectrum, via multiple images of the
same area through all of the optical filters This allows maps to be
generated, such as Clementine generated of the Moon using the same
technique. You can look at the Clementine lunar mineral maps he
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/missio...entine/images/

Pat
  #10  
Old January 21st 08, 04:29 AM posted to sci.space.history, sci.space.policy, sci.skeptic, sci.op-research,rec.photo.digital
BradGuth
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Posts: 21,544
Default Has NASA's MESSENGER gone color blind?

On Jan 20, 8:49 am, Don Stauffer in Minnesota
wrote:
On Jan 19, 4:24 pm, BradGuth wrote:



So, where exactly are those true colors of Mercury?
Perhaps MESSENGER's color imaging potential can be fixed while on the
fly, prior to eventually returning for their full orbital mission of
mapping Mercury gets under way.


. - Brad Guth


Maybe it IS just grey. Think of the moon. They used color cameras
there, and you could see colors on the logos on the astronauts, the
flag, etc. But the landscape was all shades of grey. Much of the
color on Earth is the result of biological activity. On Mars there
apparently was enough oxygen in the atmosphere to oxidize iron, but
there is not a whole lot of color there. So maybe Mercury is like the
moon, and really is just grey. If they have specroscopic sensors,
they can see fine color variations, but these are not what it would
look like to the human eye.


So, you are going on record as saying that our moon and Mercury are
each of a medium light gray?

- Brad Guth
 




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