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The Real Reason why Spirit Only Sees Red

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the now-thats-interesting dept.

use_compress writes To produce a color photograph, the rover's panoramic camera takes three black-and-white images of a scene, once with a red filter, once with a green filter and once with a blue filter. Each is then tinted with the color of the filter, and the three are combined into a color image. In assembling the Spirit photographs, however, the scientists used an image taken with an infrared filter, not the red filter (NYTimes, Free Registration Required). Some blue pigments like the cobalt in the rover color chip also emit this longer-wavelength light, which is not visible to the human eye."

1 of 273 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why don't they... by ctxspy · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Hey,

    I totally agree with the lens being the most important thing.. I got annoyed at what i believe to be B.S. regarding his 'superior' (non existant) sensor.

    It also wouldn't have been so aggravating if he hadn't gone to such extremes as saying:

    "I have a old 2 megapixel digital camera that will beat the Best 4-6 megapixel consumer camera you can buy today."

    I just don't buy it...

    Not to mention "Nasa is not about to send the really low grade crap that is available to the cunsumer to another planet. they sent the real deal."

    Err... I wasn't aware that nasa had somehow one-upped the current leaders in photo-sensors like Canon, Nikon, and Kodak that spent billions of dollars on R&D.

    But whatever... everyone believes what they want. If sensationalist b.s. is good enough for you, then ok! (by 'you' i mean the generic 'you', not necessarily you you) :)

    -Tomaj