What a wonderful instrument the marvelous Spirit's Pancam is! Ultra sensitive and high resolution color visual bands direct from the surface of Mars, and better yet, this set of clear eyes rolls! You can say it's going to see it all. or at least all it can.
On this page I will be displaying certain color combined images (as they are made available) made from the complete and accurate set of left-eye visual bands. Though the data and bands used seem a bit complicated to make a coherent color image with at first glance, in earnest it's fairly easy given the quality of the data and the known values of the visual data. The results I think are quite spectacular, and give us good insight into what it would look like to be standing in Gusev.
Later I'll go into exactly how these images were combined with the data, but suffice it to say now, only acceptable common color imaging practices were involved using the proper band combinations
Now let's see what happens when we apply some basic color process to various surface images.
click thumbs for full images
This is what I call the CSI pan.
Now let's put those last few together
The Columbia Pan
Though not absolutely color perfect they are very close, and most importantly seem to have a relatively clear light blue sky where it is visible. We've all seen the ruddy red images that have been officially proffered as representing true color on Mars surface. I'm not sure what the reasoning is behind the "red fixation", and I'd be suspicious of these big earthy colors myself... However the process is uniform and color theory sound. The image of the grind spot on Adirondack below has been color enhanced for detail
Now let's look at some awesome custom color close ups from right around Spirit..
What happened to Spirit? Well, whatever it was it seems she's all better, so we'll not continue to worry too much, click the image below for the REAL story..
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