How the Red Planet Came Down With the Pink Blues By KENNETH CHANG
Published: February 10, 2004
ASADENA, Calif. -- It hardly seemed a surprise that the panoramic photograph of Gusev Crater, the landing site of NASA's Mars rover Spirit, showed a red landscape. After all, Mars is called the red planet because it looks red, a hue imparted by rust in the planet's ubiquitous dust.
But did NASA fiddle with the image to make it look that red? As Mars buffs have pointed out in recent weeks on Web sites like Slashdot.org, a closer look reveals that parts of the rover itself, in the foreground, are oddly garish. Even the color chips placed on the rover to calibrate the color photographs had shifted. What should be bright blue is instead bright pink; what should be bright green is brown.
A few days later, after the rover Spirit made its first roll onto the surface, it took a picture of the empty lander behind it. Again, the Mars buffs zoomed in on a detail. NASA's navy blue logo, often called the "meatball" because of its shape, was now the pinkish hue of rare hamburger. Perhaps more shocking, the spacecraft designers at NASA appeared to have a thing for hot pink: that was the color of the cables strewn around the top of the lander.
What was going on? On Jan. 31, during a lull in the control room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Jason Soderblom, a graduate student at Cornell who is a member of the science team, gave a talk explaining the odd Martian colors.
The fundamental challenge in creating color photographs of Mars, he said, is that the cameras on the rovers take only black-and-white pictures, and the art of making color out of black and white never exactly reproduces what the eye sees.
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. 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.
"This is actually true for a lot of blue pigments," Mr. Soderblom said. The infrared is so bright that it washes out the blue. "That turns this thing from a dark blue chip to a vibrant pink," he said. "This is an incredibly bright pink. The same thing is happening with our green color chip."
The infrared-for-red replacement is also "why the NASA meatball is red instead of blue," Mr. Soderblom said. The same is true of the cables. They are actually blue.
For the scientists, there are good reasons to focus on infrared colors rather than the visible red. "Iron dominates mineral color in the visible, and it causes everything to have shades of red," Mr. Soderblom said.
With the infrared filter, the different iron minerals emit different colors, and the camera can better differentiate between them. "We're trying to identify the minerals in the scene, and the way we're doing this is with subtle differences," Mr. Soderblom said.
What the eye sees, even when the colors are right, is not always quite what is happening. Mr. Soderblom showed pictures of the reddish "lily pads" around the landing site of the Spirit's twin, Opportunity, where its air bags bounced. The soil in the bounce marks is actually no more red than the darker surrounding soil, but for reasons not yet known, it emits less blue light. "By being not as bright in the blue, it appears more red to us," he said.
Still, there was no reason for the Spirit to see pink on Mars. When producing the panorama, the camera also used the red filter.
"We just made a mistake," said Dr. James F. Bell III, the lead scientist for the camera. "It's really just a mess-up."
However, it should be noted that during the time the Athlon XPs were introduced, so was DDR memory, which helped with the bandwidth issues.
Explain my Athlon 1.33GHz with DDR.
The second generation Athlon (Thunderbird) had DDR support, at 200 or 266MHz.
AthlonXP is the third generation Athlon, and IIRC the names are based on Thunderbird speeds.
I may be wrong about the generations, but I know my PC had DDR266.
Cold viruses survive for a long time in your palms, and they'll live long enough on the scanner for everyone to catch them when they're all coming in in the morning.
A license for manufacturers of certain consumer electronics devices. Pricing for this license is US$0.25 per unit for each of the following types of devices that use removable solid state media to store data: portable digital still cameras; portable digital video cameras; portable digital still/video cameras; portable digital audio players; portable digital video players; portable digital audio/video players; multifunction printers; electronic photo frames; electronic musical instruments; and standard televisions. Pricing for this license is US$0.25 per unit with a cap on total royalties of $250,000 per licensee. Pricing for other device types can be negotiated with Microsoft.
Today, the FAT File system has become the ubiquitous format used for interchange of media between computers, and, since the advent of inexpensive, removable flash memory, also between digital devices.
Microsoft must have allowed companies to use FAT for some reason. They wouldn't want to create a monopoly would they?
Actually, you can change the colour of the BSOD, and the text colour.
I had a GSOD on my 95 box at work for a while.
Here's the info, for the Windows 9x users among you:
In system.ini, add the following under [386Enh]:
MessageBackColor=Colour (default is 1).
MessageTextColor=Colour (default is F). Colour is one of the following:
0 (black)
1 (blue) 2 (green)
3 (cyan)
4 (red)
5 (magenta)
6 (yellow/brown)
7 (white)
8 (grey)
9 (bright blue)
A (bright green)
B (bright cyan)
C (bright red)
D (bright magenta)
E (bright yellow)
F (bright white)
Note: Bright background colours will be displayed as their dark equivalent.
I have an ME box which has been up since April (not constantly - I believe in saving the planet AND the wallet).
It has only BSODed a handful of times, and only once without provokation.
I'd build a Linux box, but it won't support my software and I can't be bothered to learn new apps. Also, I'd have to get the hardware from somewhere.;)
BTW, most of my crashes are caused by IE.
SpinyManiac
(posting as AC because I admitted to using Windows.)
I agree. I upgraded to an Audigy because I wanted the Platinum version this time. The actual sound quality seems about the same.
BTW, my speakers ARE good enough before you ask.
Slashdot Mirror
How the Red Planet Came Down With the Pink Blues
By KENNETH CHANG
Published: February 10, 2004
ASADENA, Calif. -- It hardly seemed a surprise that the panoramic photograph of Gusev Crater, the landing site of NASA's Mars rover Spirit, showed a red landscape. After all, Mars is called the red planet because it looks red, a hue imparted by rust in the planet's ubiquitous dust.
But did NASA fiddle with the image to make it look that red? As Mars buffs have pointed out in recent weeks on Web sites like Slashdot.org, a closer look reveals that parts of the rover itself, in the foreground, are oddly garish. Even the color chips placed on the rover to calibrate the color photographs had shifted. What should be bright blue is instead bright pink; what should be bright green is brown.
A few days later, after the rover Spirit made its first roll onto the surface, it took a picture of the empty lander behind it. Again, the Mars buffs zoomed in on a detail. NASA's navy blue logo, often called the "meatball" because of its shape, was now the pinkish hue of rare hamburger. Perhaps more shocking, the spacecraft designers at NASA appeared to have a thing for hot pink: that was the color of the cables strewn around the top of the lander.
What was going on? On Jan. 31, during a lull in the control room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Jason Soderblom, a graduate student at Cornell who is a member of the science team, gave a talk explaining the odd Martian colors.
The fundamental challenge in creating color photographs of Mars, he said, is that the cameras on the rovers take only black-and-white pictures, and the art of making color out of black and white never exactly reproduces what the eye sees.
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. 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.
"This is actually true for a lot of blue pigments," Mr. Soderblom said. The infrared is so bright that it washes out the blue. "That turns this thing from a dark blue chip to a vibrant pink," he said. "This is an incredibly bright pink. The same thing is happening with our green color chip."
The infrared-for-red replacement is also "why the NASA meatball is red instead of blue," Mr. Soderblom said. The same is true of the cables. They are actually blue.
For the scientists, there are good reasons to focus on infrared colors rather than the visible red. "Iron dominates mineral color in the visible, and it causes everything to have shades of red," Mr. Soderblom said.
With the infrared filter, the different iron minerals emit different colors, and the camera can better differentiate between them. "We're trying to identify the minerals in the scene, and the way we're doing this is with subtle differences," Mr. Soderblom said.
What the eye sees, even when the colors are right, is not always quite what is happening. Mr. Soderblom showed pictures of the reddish "lily pads" around the landing site of the Spirit's twin, Opportunity, where its air bags bounced. The soil in the bounce marks is actually no more red than the darker surrounding soil, but for reasons not yet known, it emits less blue light. "By being not as bright in the blue, it appears more red to us," he said.
Still, there was no reason for the Spirit to see pink on Mars. When producing the panorama, the camera also used the red filter.
"We just made a mistake," said Dr. James F. Bell III, the lead scientist for the camera. "It's really just a mess-up."
If you turn Bluetooth off, your're invulnerable and your batteries will last longer.
Let's not forget the IBM Blue Lightning chips.
486-33 based. BL3 was 99MHz, BL4 was 132MHz.
I've no idea if they were actually launched though...
However, it should be noted that during the time the Athlon XPs were introduced, so was DDR memory, which helped with the bandwidth issues.
Explain my Athlon 1.33GHz with DDR.
The second generation Athlon (Thunderbird) had DDR support, at 200 or 266MHz.
AthlonXP is the third generation Athlon, and IIRC the names are based on Thunderbird speeds.
I may be wrong about the generations, but I know my PC had DDR266.
We develop it so we can sell it to the USA.
It needs to be tested, doesn't it?
Rampant illness is a waste of money as well.
Cold viruses survive for a long time in your palms, and they'll live long enough on the scanner for everyone to catch them when they're all coming in in the morning.
Thank you for scanning. Now wash your hands.
FAT12 will support 16MB
FAT16 will support 2GB under 9x, 4GB under NT.
FAT32 will support 2TB, but FDisk chokes after 512MB.
Let's not forget FAT12.
People still use floppy disks.
A license for manufacturers of certain consumer electronics devices. Pricing for this license is US$0.25 per unit for each of the following types of devices that use removable solid state media to store data: portable digital still cameras; portable digital video cameras; portable digital still/video cameras; portable digital audio players; portable digital video players; portable digital audio/video players; multifunction printers; electronic photo frames; electronic musical instruments; and standard televisions. Pricing for this license is US$0.25 per unit with a cap on total royalties of $250,000 per licensee. Pricing for other device types can be negotiated with Microsoft.
Looks like it.
Today, the FAT File system has become the ubiquitous format used for interchange of media between computers, and, since the advent of inexpensive, removable flash memory, also between digital devices.
Microsoft must have allowed companies to use FAT for some reason. They wouldn't want to create a monopoly would they?
Actually, you can change the colour of the BSOD, and the text colour.
I had a GSOD on my 95 box at work for a while.
Here's the info, for the Windows 9x users among you:
In system.ini, add the following under [386Enh]:
MessageBackColor=Colour (default is 1).
MessageTextColor=Colour (default is F).
Colour is one of the following:
0 (black)
1 (blue)
2 (green)
3 (cyan)
4 (red)
5 (magenta)
6 (yellow/brown)
7 (white)
8 (grey)
9 (bright blue)
A (bright green)
B (bright cyan)
C (bright red)
D (bright magenta)
E (bright yellow)
F (bright white)
Note: Bright background colours will be displayed as their dark equivalent.
The rockets that got people into orbit are tiny, July 4th/November 5th style.
The Saturn V was enormous.
At least one still exists. Go and look at it, then tell me what YOU think it was used for.
Phobos is one of Mars' moons.
The other one is Deimos.
Do you remember this from Doom?
Why wait until next year for the fireworks?
Crash it now!
I hate delayed gratification.
Gas guzzling petrol engine?
Just how far do you think it will get?
You need a real truck - a Tatra 816 8×8.
You can see similar vehicles and Unimogs in action in the Europa Truck Trial.
Yeah, it's not a SUV, but neither is the MaxiMog.
I expect that the majority of people who would want to use Linux have already got a PC.
These are the people who are least likely to put the effort in to learn an OS.
If they can ask a friend or relative for help, that's how they'll learn. My relatives do.
Being an IT technician is like being a doctor, everyone you meet is ill.
Linux is not a good idea here.
How many of these people who are new to computers would know a Linux user who can help them out?
How many would know a Windows user?
What they need is a choice.
Windows for the majority, Linux for those who want it.
Sellafield is a reprocessing plant for used nuclear fuel.
It used to be a nuclear power station until the core caught fire, but it was called Windscale then.
More to the point, I can't see any reference to an input device.
Anyone remember that eye-tracking mouse replacement thing?
I have an ME box which has been up since April (not constantly - I believe in saving the planet AND the wallet).
It has only BSODed a handful of times, and only once without provokation.
I'd build a Linux box, but it won't support my software and I can't be bothered to learn new apps. Also, I'd have to get the hardware from somewhere.
BTW, most of my crashes are caused by IE.
SpinyManiac
(posting as AC because I admitted to using Windows.)
Only if it can be argued that they are "abusing their dominant position".
I can't quite see that myself...
Great idea - I could keep my coffee warm on that.
But what about the personal injury claims?
This sounds disturbingly familiar.
Microsoft Bob?
I agree. I upgraded to an Audigy because I wanted the Platinum version this time. The actual sound quality seems about the same. BTW, my speakers ARE good enough before you ask.
How can you not like Rocket Propelled Grenades? Didn't you ever play Duke Nukem?