4 ms·

(Educated) guess: the monochrome image was simply the first wavelength band that came down. The later color image could be composed after the other bands were r

• ConceptJunkie 12y ago
  I don't know if a single wavelength monochrome image would look very good, especially if it were, say, blue, instead of red. Creating the color images was a lot harder than we might imagine, in a world where Photoshop does CMYK separations at the click of a mouse. Since I'm old enough to remember the Viking landing, they first reported on TV when the first color pictures were processed that Mars had a blue sky just like Earth. However, this was quickly corrected once the color pictures were correctly calibrated. Of course, interestingly enough you can see blue in the Martian sky at dusk or dawn.
  • dwc 12y ago
    Of course it depends on the wavelength, but single band images look a lot like any grayscale image. It's typically only when different single-band images are compared side by side that the differences really jump out. Which is, of course, why they bother with multiple bands. I worked on the lunar reconnaissance orbiter camera, and was involved with image processing and calibration for the wide angle camera, which is multiband (5 bands in visible, 2 in UV).