NASA Colorizes Its Photos

"Flying _Naked_People" http://www.rcip.com/nerdgerl/email.htm wrote in
message ...
Ok so for the rest of us ignorant cretins crawling on this planet, how are
we
able to discern the actual colors of these planets? If I were to get a
color
picture that hasn't been "enhanced", would toning down the contrast
portray a
more accurate image?

NASA is usually pretty meticulous about indicating where it has enhanced
colors, etc. on its original releases...unfortunately, the press, book and
magazine publishers rarely include this information, which has led a lot of
people to think that Jupiter, for instance, is a lot more brightly colored
than it really is. Usually, in most of the images released to the press, it
is just the saturation (intensity) of the colors that has been cranked up.
Reducing this often gets you back to something close to the original. There
have been several people who have taken NASA images and adjusted them to
their correct (naked eye) colors. I'll try to find these for you.

And I am amazed to see how earth looked from mars. It showed no detail at
all
and gave no indication of the land here. That makes me wonder if most of
the
planets we see from earth suffer the same perspective.

Sort of. It was mostly the relatively low resolution of the image that was
at fault. One does wonder what a Martian astronomer might make of our
planet. It occurs to me that when our planet is closest, it would also be
between Mars and the sun, so the unlit side of earth would be facing Mars
(the same problem we have with Venus).

RM

Well, this one is... "odd."

http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/.../01/index.html

It doesn't look like wind could have done that... (to me). Doesn't it look
like something that dried up in the process of "dripping?"

Is it wrong to speculate like that? Based on what something "looks" like?


Ron Miller wrote in article
...

"Flying _Naked_People" http://www.rcip.com/nerdgerl/email.htm wrote in
message ...
Ok so for the rest of us ignorant cretins crawling on this planet, how are
we
able to discern the actual colors of these planets? If I were to get a
color
picture that hasn't been "enhanced", would toning down the contrast
portray a
more accurate image?

NASA is usually pretty meticulous about indicating where it has enhanced
colors, etc. on its original releases...unfortunately, the press, book and
magazine publishers rarely include this information, which has led a lot of
people to think that Jupiter, for instance, is a lot more brightly colored
than it really is. Usually, in most of the images released to the press, it
is just the saturation (intensity) of the colors that has been cranked up.
Reducing this often gets you back to something close to the original. There
have been several people who have taken NASA images and adjusted them to
their correct (naked eye) colors. I'll try to find these for you.

And I am amazed to see how earth looked from mars. It showed no detail at
all
and gave no indication of the land here. That makes me wonder if most of
the
planets we see from earth suffer the same perspective.

Sort of. It was mostly the relatively low resolution of the image that was
at fault. One does wonder what a Martian astronomer might make of our
planet. It occurs to me that when our planet is closest, it would also be
between Mars and the sun, so the unlit side of earth would be facing Mars
(the same problem we have with Venus).

RM

"Flying _Naked_People" http://www.rcip.com/nerdgerl/email.htm wrote in
message ...
Well, this one is... "odd."

http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/.../01/index.html

It doesn't look like wind could have done that... (to me). Doesn't it look
like something that dried up in the process of "dripping?"

Is it wrong to speculate like that? Based on what something "looks" like?

Not at all! Astronomers do it all the time. But I think that in this case
what you are seeing is wind-eroded strata (for several reasons---I'm going
to dinner now, but remind me to tell you what they are). Pretty
nifty-looking, isn't it? I hadn't seen this photo before...has me thinking
about doing a painting of what it might look like from the surface.

RM

Ron Miller wrote in article
...

"Flying _Naked_People" http://www.rcip.com/nerdgerl/email.htm wrote in
message ...
Well, this one is... "odd."

http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/.../01/index.html

It doesn't look like wind could have done that... (to me). Doesn't it look
like something that dried up in the process of "dripping?"

Is it wrong to speculate like that? Based on what something "looks" like?

Not at all! Astronomers do it all the time. But I think that in this case
what you are seeing is wind-eroded strata (for several reasons---I'm going
to dinner now, but remind me to tell you what they are). Pretty
nifty-looking, isn't it? I hadn't seen this photo before...has me thinking
about doing a painting of what it might look like from the surface.

Yeah... it's crazy looking... I don't think I've seen anything like that on
earth - not that I've seen every rock structure there is, but... that's just
bizarre. What kind of crazy winds would whip around and create something like
that?!

Yeah, I'm going to need to hear your reasons! Lol.

Have a nice dinner!

RM

"Flying _Naked_People" http://www.rcip.com/nerdgerl/email.htm wrote in
message ...

Yeah... it's crazy looking... I don't think I've seen anything like that
on
earth - not that I've seen every rock structure there is, but... that's
just
bizarre. What kind of crazy winds would whip around and create something
like
that?!

You ain't seen crazy until you've gone through more of the Mars images!

RM