4 ms·

Not discounting how amazing that picture is, but it is false color.

wmeredith 13y ago
It is a bit silly. "This thing we found resembles a rose, because after we found it, we colored it like a rose." WTF? It's an amazing image to be sure, but why all that nonsense?
- btilly 13y ago
  It is false color because it has to be. If you're sending a camera from here to another planet, it makes no sense to send a camera that takes pictures in the same wavelengths that we see so you can claim true color. Instead you pick wavelengths that for whatever scientific reasons you think will be most informative. And then once you have that information, for humans to understand it, it makes no sense to leave it as raw binary data. Instead you map some of the wavelengths that you've got onto wavelengths that our eyes can see, and trained human eyes can identify and understand features very quickly. But at that point you've got a false color picture.
  - spacemanaki 13y ago
    But here's a "natural-color" image of the same hurricane: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia14945.html http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia1494... "Images with red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural-color view, which is what the human eye would see if we were there at Saturn."
    - btilly 13y ago
      So that satellite has that capability. But not all do. Comparing natural color and false color, it is clear to me that false color is more convenient for trying to pick out features in the picture.
      - spacemanaki 13y ago
        I don't think anyone's disputing that false color could be useful to scientists or that we should put cameras on satellites that capture true color images for the benefit of blog posts targeting the general public, and I certainly was not claiming anything like that, being horribly under-qualified. But waxing poetic about "the red rose of Saturn" is a little bit silly IMHO, but it's nothing worse than that... http://www.ciclops.org/view_event/191/The_Red_Rose_Of_Saturn http://www.ciclops.org/view_event/191/The_Red_Rose_Of_Saturn
  - baddox 13y ago
    The silly part is then marveling that it looks like a rose and greenery when red and green were chosen more or less arbitrarily.
- ianstallings 13y ago
  A big part of science is the dog and pony show to bring in even more funding down the road. Throw in the public funding of NASA and you see the need to publish these fantastic images - to justify a budget. And it works.

It is a bit silly. "This thing we found resembles a rose, because after we found it, we colored it like a rose." WTF? It's an amazing image to be sure, but why all that nonsense?

btilly 13y ago
It is false color because it has to be. If you're sending a camera from here to another planet, it makes no sense to send a camera that takes pictures in the same wavelengths that we see so you can claim true color. Instead you pick wavelengths that for whatever scientific reasons you think will be most informative. And then once you have that information, for humans to understand it, it makes no sense to leave it as raw binary data. Instead you map some of the wavelengths that you've got onto wavelengths that our eyes can see, and trained human eyes can identify and understand features very quickly. But at that point you've got a false color picture.
- spacemanaki 13y ago
  But here's a "natural-color" image of the same hurricane: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia14945.html http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia1494... "Images with red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural-color view, which is what the human eye would see if we were there at Saturn."
  - btilly 13y ago
    So that satellite has that capability. But not all do. Comparing natural color and false color, it is clear to me that false color is more convenient for trying to pick out features in the picture.
    - spacemanaki 13y ago
      I don't think anyone's disputing that false color could be useful to scientists or that we should put cameras on satellites that capture true color images for the benefit of blog posts targeting the general public, and I certainly was not claiming anything like that, being horribly under-qualified. But waxing poetic about "the red rose of Saturn" is a little bit silly IMHO, but it's nothing worse than that... http://www.ciclops.org/view_event/191/The_Red_Rose_Of_Saturn http://www.ciclops.org/view_event/191/The_Red_Rose_Of_Saturn
- baddox 13y ago
  The silly part is then marveling that it looks like a rose and greenery when red and green were chosen more or less arbitrarily.
ianstallings 13y ago
A big part of science is the dog and pony show to bring in even more funding down the road. Throw in the public funding of NASA and you see the need to publish these fantastic images - to justify a budget. And it works.