MESSENGER takes more photo's
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The messenger has been sending us more cool pictures! :) I especially like this one: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/messenger/multimedia/mercury_orbit_image4.html[^]
Don't they touch up the color on all space images to make them look cool? I know they do it for galaxies, as much of the light is undetectable to the human eye, so they shade say ultraviolet as violet and infrared as red, etc.
"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!" — Hunter S. Thompson
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Don't they touch up the color on all space images to make them look cool? I know they do it for galaxies, as much of the light is undetectable to the human eye, so they shade say ultraviolet as violet and infrared as red, etc.
"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!" — Hunter S. Thompson
Before I can answer that question I need to know what you think the 'correct' color is. I'm going to use the Orion Nebula because color balance in them is much more fun (even ignoring the fact that many nebula images are done in 100% false color), but the same is true for galaxies. If you look at the orion nebula with your naked eye, binoculars, or a small telescope you'll see a gray scale patch because it's not bright enough to trigger the color sensitive cone cells in your retina, and the rods are strictly gray scale (but much more sensitive). Look at it in a large telescope, or image it with most consumer digital cameras and it will appear green because the Oxygen III and Hydrogen Beta emission lines are in the Green part of the spectrum, your rods have their peak sensitivity near the green range, and consumer cameras are filtered to have response similar to the human eye. Image it with an astronomical digital camera with a color sensor or a monochrome one using RGB filters (the color sort just put per pixel RGB filters on adjacent pixels), or measure its spectrum and you'll find that most of the light is in the far red portion of the spectrum. Your eye only has a very low sensitivity to light in the Hydrogen Alpha emission line (it's not that far from IR) and as a result consumer cameras typically filter it entirely. The other major reprocessing that is typically done is to rescale the brightness levels because the sensors in a CCD are approximately linear, while your eyes response is logarithmic. This typically can be done without any banding type effects because the camera's raw data is 16bit, and normal images are only 8bit.
3x12=36 2x12=24 1x12=12 0x12=18
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Before I can answer that question I need to know what you think the 'correct' color is. I'm going to use the Orion Nebula because color balance in them is much more fun (even ignoring the fact that many nebula images are done in 100% false color), but the same is true for galaxies. If you look at the orion nebula with your naked eye, binoculars, or a small telescope you'll see a gray scale patch because it's not bright enough to trigger the color sensitive cone cells in your retina, and the rods are strictly gray scale (but much more sensitive). Look at it in a large telescope, or image it with most consumer digital cameras and it will appear green because the Oxygen III and Hydrogen Beta emission lines are in the Green part of the spectrum, your rods have their peak sensitivity near the green range, and consumer cameras are filtered to have response similar to the human eye. Image it with an astronomical digital camera with a color sensor or a monochrome one using RGB filters (the color sort just put per pixel RGB filters on adjacent pixels), or measure its spectrum and you'll find that most of the light is in the far red portion of the spectrum. Your eye only has a very low sensitivity to light in the Hydrogen Alpha emission line (it's not that far from IR) and as a result consumer cameras typically filter it entirely. The other major reprocessing that is typically done is to rescale the brightness levels because the sensors in a CCD are approximately linear, while your eyes response is logarithmic. This typically can be done without any banding type effects because the camera's raw data is 16bit, and normal images are only 8bit.
3x12=36 2x12=24 1x12=12 0x12=18
Maybe I was just thinking of the images from the hubble then? http://hubblesite.org/gallery/behind_the_pictures/[^]
"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!" — Hunter S. Thompson
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The messenger has been sending us more cool pictures! :) I especially like this one: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/messenger/multimedia/mercury_orbit_image4.html[^]
I thought I could see the male and female symbols on the landscape ... which rather kills the old "Men are from Mars, women are from Venus" saying - they're both from Mercury!