[X] My Assistant

[nasaman58]

What I'm about to write could go equally well under the Opportunity section, but I had to put it somewhere. (Doug, maybe this ties to the post I wrote earlier in reply to your reorganization scheme about lumping oppy and spirit together).

Now, onto business...

I'm curious what the whole sky of Mars looks like. Whenever we get color pans, we only see a little strip of the sky (with the nice exception I believe Doug did of the sun above Eagle crater). Sure, the sky looks bright and maybe a tad bluish near the Sun, but what about up high near the zenith but away from the sun? Is it a dark brownish color? Or close to black?

On Sol 178 (July 4 for us Americans )when Spirit was climbing toward West Spur, the PanCam was pointed up, so we got to see some darker, higher altitude sky than we normally see. But I'd like to see basically a whole-sky or near whole-sky "pan" to see the color gradients. Consider this a challenge for you people with the right Photoshop/software hook-ups and mad skillz!

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[Bubbinski]

very well done !

also matches the impression of other pre-sunset views seen e.g. from the pathfinder mission.

Thanks, Nirgal.

The pics by Spirit were taken one hour before sunrise....I assume the same blue halo around the sun would show then too, right? I'm wondering if maybe I used too much blue in my rendition to be realistic, but I like how it looks artistically, and it'll end up being my computer wallpaper.

In any case, using the Paint Shop Pro histogram function is merely adding a single, uniform color tone to an image. I'm a rank, and I do mean rank, amateur at image manipulation, a lot of the stuff I've seen on this board just blows my mind. For example, that Hazcam B&W image someone colorized was just awesome, I wish I had that kind of talent.

[4th rock from th...]

very well done !

also matches the impression of other pre-sunset views seen e.g. from the pathfinder mission.

Thanks, Nirgal.

The pics by Spirit were taken one hour before sunrise....I assume the same blue halo around the sun would show then too, right? I'm wondering if maybe I used too much blue in my rendition to be realistic, but I like how it looks artistically, and it'll end up being my computer wallpaper.

In any case, using the Paint Shop Pro histogram function is merely adding a single, uniform color tone to an image. I'm a rank, and I do mean rank, amateur at image manipulation, a lot of the stuff I've seen on this board just blows my mind. For example, that Hazcam B&W image someone colorized was just awesome, I wish I had that kind of talent.

Hi,

On my page http://www.astrosurf.com/nunes/explor/explor_vik.htm you can see a sequence of sunrise images from Viking 1. I've calibrated so that the surface maintains the same basic color as in daylight if you brighten the images. On the original data blue levels are very high, but I think the human eye should compensate for that, as it does on earth. Overall brightness levels seem to be acurate.

So I think your colorization is very close to the original data, but if you were there the saturation whould appear lower.

[Nirgal]

On my page http://www.astrosurf.com/nunes/explor/explor_vik.htm you can see a sequence of sunrise images from Viking 1. I've calibrated so that the surface maintains the same basic color as in daylight if you brighten the images. On the original data blue levels are very high, but I think the human eye should compensate for that, as it does on earth. Overall brightness levels seem to be acurate.

Hi forth_rock !

the color images on your site are absolutely awsome !
(Don Davis himself could not have made it better

Also your MGS wide angle color composites...

What I especially like, is that your colors seem accurate *and*
very aesthetically pleasant at the same time.

Do you allow me to pose just two questions about your MGS images ?

The MGS Wide Angle camera has only two filters (red & blue) so
I suppose that you synthesize the green channel as a mixture of red&blue,
right ?

From the MGS/MSSS site raw images, do you use the "processed" i.e contrast stretched (GIf,IMG) versions or the unprocessed (IMQ) versions as
starting point for your RGB-color composites ?

BTW.: recently, there are also wunderful MGS color wide angles posted here
by djellison (lovely Olympus Mons & Limb pictures

[4th rock from th...]

On my page http://www.astrosurf.com/nunes/explor/explor_vik.htm you can see a sequence of sunrise images from Viking 1. I've calibrated so that the surface maintains the same basic color as in daylight if you brighten the images. On the original data blue levels are very high, but I think the human eye should compensate for that, as it does on earth. Overall brightness levels seem to be acurate.

Hi forth_rock !

the color images on your site are absolutely awsome !
(Don Davis himself could not have made it better

Also your MGS wide angle color composites...

What I especially like, is that your colors seem accurate *and*
very aesthetically pleasant at the same time.

Do you allow me to pose just two questions about your MGS images ?

The MGS Wide Angle camera has only two filters (red & blue) so
I suppose that you synthesize the green channel as a mixture of red&blue,
right ?

From the MGS/MSSS site raw images, do you use the "processed" i.e contrast stretched (GIf,IMG) versions or the unprocessed (IMQ) versions as
starting point for your RGB-color composites ?

BTW.: recently, there are also wunderful MGS color wide angles posted here
by djellison (lovely Olympus Mons & Limb pictures

Thankyou for your kind words.

For the MGS i used the Gif images, scaled the histograms using Mars Express and MER rover images as a guide for surface and sky colors and then created a green channel by mixing red and blue.
It isn't very accurate but the results are pleasing.

If you were in orbit the color might look different because of the atmosphere.
Light goes twice through the atmosphere on orbital images (sun - > down, reflected by the surface, up - > sensor).
By using surface images for reference I'm eliminating half of this effect, but i get more color variation and contrast. Otherwise it whould be "mars through red dust" type images.

Look at earth from space images and this effect is visible (lots of blue).

I'll put this explanations on my site some time in the future, as I did for the Viking stuff.

I like djellison images, great work there!

4throck