My 2 cents on the color issue.

Would I love a kodachrome slide (or two, in stereo) of the Opportunity Outcrop? You bet. Am I going to get it. Nope, not really.

It doesn't bother me that we are not seeing the 'actual' colors of Mars. More than that, I am delighted that there is a wide range of filters on the Pancam.

I've spent a lot of time looking at rocks in the desert. They look different all the time. It's the time of day, if it's sunny or shady, wet or dry, sunglasses on or off, different kind of sunglasses, how much sleep I had, blood sugar level... But each may show you something you did not see before. When I look at the images from Mars on the computer, I mess with them all the time: color balance, gamma correction, negative, histogram stretch or equalize...even mirroring makes you look at it in a different way. Geology is also an art.

But the science is why there are these filters are there. The way rock reflects photons can be quite diagnostic for elemental composition. In some ways, the Pancam sees better than we do. The purple blueberries were cool, no? Wouldn't it be great to see like a cat at night, or with x-ray vision? The great thing about technology is that it makes our eyes better! We can see and discriminate wavelengths that our eyes, the delightful gifts they are, could not possibly discern. I know, it sucks when you look at a Landsat image and the trees are red but you get used to it. There are geologic structures I've mapped that could best be seen with infrared photos. I've prospected for scheelite (a tungsten mineral) with a blacklight on moonless nights. Groovy, but effective. The bigger my eyes the better.

What are the colors of Mars really like? I'll never know unless my orbs are there in person. In the meantime, have fun with what you got. Change those colors anyway you want, you'll never know what you'll discover. I hope I can find time to play with all these different color channels now that Robert has made it understandable. I was having the hardest time figuring out those *$&#@ file names and what filter was what. Praise Robert with great praise.

Oh, you wanna see a blue rock? Check out the Brushy Basin Shale of the Morrison Formation in Salt Valley of Arches National Park, Utah, USA. Like eyeshadow blue, it's amazing. I'll see if I've a photo to post, it's probably a slide, I'll have to scan it, transmit it, you'll look at it on your monitor and it ain't nothing like seeing it in a late afternoon sun after a thunderstorm.