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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."

7 of 273 comments (clear)

  1. Cue a thousand alien-watcher website updates.. by Channard · · Score: 5, Funny

    'Aha! So that's why they don't see little green men...' - at last, the dream of aliens living on Mars is alive again.

  2. prepare the servers for a nytimes-dotting... by mobiux · · Score: 5, Funny

    They mention slashdot.org by name.

    Could this be some sort of revenge?

    1. Re:prepare the servers for a nytimes-dotting... by Asprin · · Score: 5, Funny


      Quick! Put up the free registration page!

      --
      "Lawyers are for sucks."
      - Doug McKenzie
    2. Re:prepare the servers for a nytimes-dotting... by lukewarmfusion · · Score: 5, Funny

      Then NYTimes will have to link to the Google cache, someone will copy and paste the unformatted text on their site anyway, and we'll see a plagiarizing reporter trying to karma whore in order to get his job back.

      Of course you know.... this means war.

  3. Science, not reality TV by kinnell · · Score: 3, Funny

    It's a good job the pictures aren't coming back with a blue tint, or lynch mobs would be turning up at NASA HQ.

    --
    If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
  4. Gameboy Camera Color by drfishy · · Score: 3, Funny

    Reminds me of the Gameboy Camera Color Project: http://www.ruleofthirds.com/gameboy/

  5. Re:But what is this thing? by SnowZero · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yeah, but how does this compare to the penguin worship formations we already know are there? That "crab" looks more like a "martian booger" to me.