First Pictures From Mars Phoenix Lander 211
Now that the solar panels have been deployed, the Mars Phoenix Lander has begun sending back pictures of the red planet to the hungry space geeks of earth. In just a few weeks the claw will deploy and they'll start digging a hole. The scientists expect to use the dirt to construct a little sand castle which they will defend with several GI Joe action figures, and a bald barbie stolen from their sisters. Oh, and maybe find water or bacteria.
Re:Colour? (Score:5, Informative)
IIRC, pretty much all the color images from previous landers are composites of multiple images with different filters, making a human-eye approximation.
Somewhere in the red circle... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Colour? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Where on the planet did it land? (Score:1, Informative)
Community forum for Google Earth - Mars section: http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/postlist.php/Cat/0/Board/mars [keyhole.com]
Re:Interesting Object? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I hope they don't find life (Score:1, Informative)
Google cache ftw. im reading now, shall post my reply in a few.
Re:Interesting Object? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Where on the planet did it land? (Score:2, Informative)
There's a map at the bottom showing Phoenix's position relative to the other landers.
Not sure if it's on the NASA site?
Re:Where on the planet did it land? (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/phoenix/images-all.php [nasa.gov]
That seems to have just about everything, plus some earth comparisons that should give you an idea of where on Mars it landed.
Re:Colour? (Score:3, Informative)
Because with that particular camera, taking an RGB photo involves making three separate exposures with different filters, transmitting the result back to Earth, and combining them. Given that the lander has been on the ground for less than 24 hours so far, they're still at the quick-glance-around-to-see-where-we-are stage and don't want to waste bandwidth taking the same picture three times. Give them time. Given the PR value of RGB images I'd expect some to start showing up within a few days.
(In fact a two-colour image [nasa.gov] has shown up already, but it's not true RGB and probably isn't what you're looking for.)
Re:Colour? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Colour Imaging? (Score:3, Informative)
My Nikon D50 captures some of the UV and IR as well. That's the other reason everyone uses a UV filter on their lenses (the first being, it's a cheap way to protect the camera lens that might well be worth more than the camera). With a special filter, I can take IR pictures with my Nikon. [unspace.net] Even your eyes pick up a bit of the UV -- if you look at a blacklight bulb, it's hard to focus on -- the lenses in your eyes focus visible light and don't do as good a job on the UV.
Re:Colour? (Score:3, Informative)
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go back to photoshop to make the photograph of a color chart come out close to the same on the screen as it looks in real life. Then there's the real fun -- getting the thing to print out so that it's close to the chart and the computer screen.
There are times when I'm about ready to switch to all black-and-white.
Re:Colour Imaging? - Cost and Compromise (Score:5, Informative)
For example, the rover missions usually use infrared filters instead of "red" filters for that end of their range; but they can use that one to approximate the red filter with some adjustments.
I suspect they will do similar things with this mission once it gets up to speed. The preliminary color images are 2-filter approximations. If they do what the rovers did, they'll use 3 filters that don't match human eyesight but compensate with digital processing to give us "human" approximations. They'll be better than these early 2-filter approximations.
If you as a human are upset at this approximation; fish, birds and reptiles will be even more angry because they have 4 color cones instead of 3. (We'd probably have four if our mammalian ancestors were not nocturnal. Damned those mammal-squishing dinosaurs who made us hide in the darkness! I wish meteors on you for limiting our color!)
Photos comparison with permafrost on Earth (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2008/05/deja_vu_on_mars.html [nasawatch.com]
They caught it on way down (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/main/index.html [nasa.gov]
They mentioned giving it a try at a press conference, but gave it really small odds because the image size is much smaller than the potential landing range drift. Lucky hit.
Re:Wow (Score:1, Informative)
If you think there isn't anything technical about dirt, well, it means you have about as much knowledge of soil science as a computer newbie has about assembler. That's okay, but don't assume that because it looks ordinary it actually is ordinary to someone knowledgeable.
Re:Color Camera == 3 B&W Cameras (Score:4, Informative)
The rovers Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity use a lot of different color filters that are placed in front of the imaging sensor. Because the filters are fixed, 3 CCD, or 3 CMOS cameras isn't very good for science, it's good for making a pretty picture.
Re:Colour? (Score:2, Informative)
Digital imaging equipment doesn't see the world in colour. In a digital camera light causes electric charge to build up in photoelectric elements (CMOS or CCD) inside the camera. Lots of light makes lots of charge, less light makes less charge. In other words, an image that the camera sees is translated into brightness values - black, grey and white to you and me.
To turn this back into a colour image you need to take more than one photo, and place a filter over the top of the camera so that only light at certain wavelengths is seen.
If you do this for red, green and blue light then you get three different black and white images like this:
red [arizona.edu] green [arizona.edu] blue [arizona.edu]
If you combine these together using a program like Photoshop or GIMP you get a a false colour composite [flickr.com]. You can then tweak this to make it look how you want it.
Does it look like you'd really see it? I guess it depends on the person, but it's close enough for most of us.
* Note that I'm only guessing that the above Phoenix images were taken using red, green and blue filters - I have no information about them - but they seem to be pretty close.