I believe the NASA pictures look blurry because they were created with higher compression ratio pictures. The pictures used to create the images here are newer raw images of much higher quality. I'm sure NASA/JPL will release a better press release image soon.
As for the color, its' hard to say. NASA has the pre-flight calibration data from the cameras and they have used the calibration target on the rover.
My personal opinion is this picture from spirit is probably very accurate color. It was taken using almost all of the color filters, instead of just blue, green, and near-IR like most of the pictures...
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040119a/P2542_Sol14_L456-A16R1.jpg
they have some calibration data on page 76 of this PDF....
http://europa.la.asu.edu:8585/PGG/greeley/courses/pdf/bell_2003.pdfI doubt if this information is very useful for most of us though.
Space/Science » in reply to "What color is Mars, anyway?"
re: "What color is Mars, anyway?"
The whole thread (34 posts)
- Playing with colour in Opportunity Crater. - Warning - lots of images!
- re: Playing with colour in Opportunity Crater.
- So can you infer anything about the rocks from the filtered photos?
- Color--in the eye of the beholder.
- "What color is Mars, anyway?"
- Nasa accused of painting Mars red
- Errata!