[X] My Assistant

[MERovingian]

We've just got the first color picture from MSL today
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?ImageID=4282

if I understood it well, this is the first time ever that a real color camera has been sent to the Red planet.

Something is nagging me though, and certainly this is here in UMSF that I will get the correct and definitive answer.
Since the 70s and the Viking missions, there's always been debates about the real color of the surface and skies of Mars. They had indeed come up with funny results during the Viking missions with nearly blue skies!

Then came the MERs, and the pictures were, and still are (go Oppy go!), taken through three filters, and then it's all a question of mixing all this together (by now you must have guessed that I am neither a photographer nor a photoshoper!). But as often seen here on this site, everyone has then hers or his own interpretation when it comes to the final result. I have indeed seen here much better looking Martian pics than on the MER site (sometimes, not always)

All this to say that up until this morning, we weren't 100% sure that what we were seing was the real Mars, in its true colors but a very close aproximation. Correct?

So my question is this: is this picture from MSL the very first one to show us the real Martian colors??

Thanks.

[JohnVV]

After years of working in color photo darkrooms
I can tell you that color IS SUBJECTIVE

i can look at a print and say" it is perfect " the other owner will say "to blue "
the other silent partner might say " nice, but just a bit too warm "

so "REAL" color ??????? there is no such thing
every one sees things just a bit different

[fredk]

I can tell you that color IS SUBJECTIVE

As someone who's studied electromagnetism, it's always irked me to some degree to hear people talk about the subjectivity of colour. As far as perception of colour is concerned, I agree completely.

But there is a well-defined sense in which colour is completely objective. A display could reproduce the full spectrum and intensity of visible light that would be present (as a function of direction) a couple of metres above somewhere on the Martian surface, at some time during the day. (I don't care too much where or when.) Of course ordinary rgb displays could never do that. But in principle it could be done, to whatever precision you want. That is what I think about (dream about) when I wonder what colour the Martian surface is. I don't care about the subjectivity of perception, or the fact that the display might not cover the full 4pi steradians ("all the way around") and the light from around the edges of the display may affect my perception, or the fact that my perception of the colour will change over time as I get acustomed to the orangeness.

I don't care about any of that. I just want to see that spectrum!