Dawn at Ceres Thread

[Camacha]

They should release a couple images which would be close to what human eyes see.

You do realize that lighting in deep space often is less than desirable, meaning colours (or anything) will hardly be visible to human eyes? It is not as simple as 'making something you would see', as you need to compensate for all sorts of issues and circumstances.

Case in point: P67 is very, very dark. Without pumping up the contrast considerably, humans would not see much at all.

[Karriz]

You do realize that lighting in deep space often is less than desirable, meaning colours (or anything) will hardly be visible to human eyes? It is not as simple as 'making something you would see', as you need to compensate for all sorts of issues and circumstances.

Case in point: P67 is very, very dark. Without pumping up the contrast considerably, humans would not see much at all.

True, I know that, and sometimes the brightness has to be cranked up to see the details. But I suppose the point is that people want to see something that approximates visible light. Ceres is dark, but so is the Moon.

[Camacha]

True, I know that, and sometimes the brightness has to be cranked up to see the details. But I suppose the point is that people want to see something that approximates visible light. Ceres is dark, but so is the Moon.

You are confusing me. The Moon is not dark. Not from Earth, not relative to other bodies - not at all?

[Slam_Jones]

Holy crap, Hyperion, Ceres, I thought those were references to games at first (they pretty much are)

Hyperion being from Starcraft 2

And Ceres being from Warframe

Heh, I always think of Borderlands when I read 'Hyperion'

[Sidereus]

You are confusing me. The Moon is not dark. Not from Earth, not relative to other bodies - not at all?

The moon has a very low albedo and only appears to be bright because of its proximity and because you're comparing it to space, which is far darker. If you were to take a chunk of the moon and look at it in normal light on earth, it would look like worn asphalt. Its brightness is due to an optical illusion called color constancy.

True, I know that, and sometimes the brightness has to be cranked up to see the details. But I suppose the point is that people want to see something that approximates visible light. Ceres is dark, but so is the Moon.

Ceres is also much farther away from the sun than the Moon is, and also much smaller, so it's not going to reflect nearly as much light thanks to the inverse square law.

[lajoswinkler]

The real thing is just a bunch of numbers in a file. I do not know what you expect, pretty much all photography has been severely edited to make human sense out of it. Most craft do not even take normal RGB pictures, you will need to build that out of filtered shots.

Probes send data - software edits the data.

Probes do not take nor send "B/W" or "RGB". They send monochromatic images taken through various filters and it's automated. It's entirely up to the mission control to process the images in the way human eye would see them. If they can't do that with few photos so that people and encyclopedias can benefit from it, then fuk them and their PR department. It's one man's work, literally.

You are confusing me. The Moon is not dark. Not from Earth, not relative to other bodies - not at all?

The Moon is very dark. Very, very dark. Not like comets, but very dark.

[Kryten]

Probes send data - software edits the data.

Probes do not take nor send "B/W" or "RGB". They send monochromatic images taken through various filters and it's automated. It's entirely up to the mission control to process the images in the way human eye would see them. If they can't do that with few photos so that people and encyclopedias can benefit from it, then fuk them and their PR department. It's one man's work, literally.

You can't process data to produce RGB images with standard RGB filters, which any planetary science instrument will not have because they're not scientifically useful. You can produce an approximation from scientific filters that are close, but we've already seen you complain when they do that.

[lajoswinkler]

You can't process data to produce RGB images with standard RGB filters, which any planetary science instrument will not have because they're not scientifically useful. You can produce an approximation from scientific filters that are close, but we've already seen you complain when they do that.

Dawn has a full set of filters so it is very much possible.

And those approximations using UV-G-NIR is ok, I don't have problems with it. Those things are a thing that belongs to the past, though.

[Camacha]

The moon has a very low albedo

I must admit it is a lot lower than I thought. It does seem the material has some mitigating properties, though that in no way closes the gap between my perception of the brightness and the actuality of it.

Probes send data - software edits the data.

Probes do not take nor send "B/W" or "RGB". They send monochromatic images taken through various filters and it's automated. It's entirely up to the mission control to process the images in the way human eye would see them.

That is exactly what I said. It is not a matter of taking the data and it is a picture anyone can understand. You need to cook and shimmy until you have something that looks like what a human would see - it is pretty much always an interpretation, a derived work. That makes comments about that 'it does not really look that way' a bit more complicated.

[baggers]

White and gold or blue and black?

Humans eyes are pretty poor to these sort of tricks. Even if you all look at the same pic, you don't see the same colors. Everyone add a "brain processing" to the data. What a mess!

http://xkcd.com/1492/

Edited May 29, 2015 by baggers

[lajoswinkler]

That is exactly what I said. It is not a matter of taking the data and it is a picture anyone can understand. You need to cook and shimmy until you have something that looks like what a human would see - it is pretty much always an interpretation, a derived work. That makes comments about that 'it does not really look that way' a bit more complicated.

That's why we have calibration and standards, so we can differentiate between "it might be A" and "A seems to be 99.99999% likely".

As Dawn has a full set of filters, there are zero excuses for NASA if it fails to deliver the real thing. I mean I've done these things. Taking photos in monochrome through various filters and then merging them in a software to reveal true color. If I can do it, then some dude at NASA can, too. Otherwise other people will do it for them after they release the raw data to the public, but by then it will be too late.

White and gold or blue and black?

Humans eyes are pretty poor to these sort of tricks. Even if you all look at the same pic, you don't see the same colors. Everyone add a "brain processing" to the data. What a mess!

http://xkcd.com/1492/

No, "the dress" has nothing to do with this. "The dress" is what happens when stupid people don't understand the difference between "what do you see?" and "what do you think this looks like in normal circumstances?".

Answer to "what do you see" is certainly not black and blue because the photo shows ochre and pale violet-blue. If someone says differen't, he's a jackass. Any decent photo editing software can use a dropper tool to reveal the color codes and they certainly aren't blue and black.

Answer to "what do you think it normally looks like" is arbitrary.

There is zero "brain processing" thing here. Just human stupidity.

[Camacha]

That's why we have calibration and standards, so we can differentiate between "it might be A" and "A seems to be 99.99999% likely".

That is great for scientific purposes, but pretty much useless for what a human might see. That is the point of the whole discussion.

As Dawn has a full set of filters, there are zero excuses for NASA if it fails to deliver the real thing. I mean I've done these things. Taking photos in monochrome through various filters and then merging them in a software to reveal true color. If I can do it, then some dude at NASA can, too. Otherwise other people will do it for them after they release the raw data to the public, but by then it will be too late.

They released an imagine, but apparently that was not good enough for you.

- - - Updated - - -

Answer to "what do you see" is certainly not black and blue because the photo shows ochre and pale violet-blue. If someone says differen't, he's a jackass.

Now I remember, you were the guy with the very absolute statements!

[baggers]

No, "the dress" has nothing to do with this. "The dress" is what happens when stupid people don't understand the difference between "what do you see?" and "what do you think this looks like in normal circumstances?".

Answer to "what do you see" is certainly not black and blue because the photo shows ochre and pale violet-blue. If someone says differen't, he's a jackass. Any decent photo editing software can use a dropper tool to reveal the color codes and they certainly aren't blue and black.

Answer to "what do you think it normally looks like" is arbitrary.

There is zero "brain processing" thing here. Just human stupidity.

Bah, the point is that you can't judge "real colors" by eyes only, if you have to check with a photo editing software ^^

[lajoswinkler]

That is great for scientific purposes, but pretty much useless for what a human might see. That is the point of the whole discussion.

It is very useful for what a human might see. That's the whole point of photos like this.

In case of Dawn, software knows what it's dealing with because it is calibrated with the probe's hardware, and it's a piece of cake to adjust the photo to look as it would appear to a human eye because our vision is not a mystery anymore as it was in 18th century. It's all possible and even better - it's possible to do it in half an hour, munching cookies and sipping tea included.

They released an imagine, but apparently that was not good enough for you.

They've released a false color image. Read.

Images taken using blue (440 nanometers), green (550 nanometers) and infrared (920 nanometers) spectral filters were combined to create the map. The filters were assigned to color channels in reverse order, compared to natural color; in other words, the short-wavelength blue images were assigned to the red color channel and the long-wavelength infrared images are assigned to the blue color channel.

I'd be ok with 440/550/920 combination because the difference from reality is not that great. So that's not an issue.

However, this is "backwards assigned" and not only that, but the saturation has been pushed to enormous levels. How can I or anyone be happy with this? This is not how Ceres looks.

Now I remember, you were the guy with the very absolute statements!

No, I'm the guy that in most cases tries to use careful statements, but sometimes doesn't, and then people cherrypick it and try to say "I'm the absolute statement guy". Please don't do that. I also don't really know what does comet errosion have to do with this.

Bah, the point is that you can't judge "real colors" by eyes only, if you have to check with a photo editing software ^^

No, a photo editing software can not tell you the real color (in natural light, correctly photographed) of that dress because the image does not contain such information. It can tell you what colors are in the image, and that's what my eyes can do, too. There is ochre and weak blue-violet in the image. That's all a software can do, as well as my eyes.

[peadar1987]

No, "the dress" has nothing to do with this. "The dress" is what happens when stupid people don't understand the difference between "what do you see?" and "what do you think this looks like in normal circumstances?".

Answer to "what do you see" is certainly not black and blue because the photo shows ochre and pale violet-blue. If someone says differen't, he's a jackass. Any decent photo editing software can use a dropper tool to reveal the color codes and they certainly aren't blue and black.

Answer to "what do you think it normally looks like" is arbitrary.

There is zero "brain processing" thing here. Just human stupidity.

Oh please, I look at that picture and I see black and blue. It's not because I'm stupid, or a jackass, it's because that's the way my brain processes the image. Other peoples brains process the image slightly differently, and see white and gold, but I don't feel the need to be a .... to them about it.

[Red Iron Crown]

The Dress discussion is driving things off topic (and is surprisingly acrimonious), please let it drop and get back to discussing Dawn visiting Ceres.

[Camacha]

The Dress discussion is driving things off topic (and is surprisingly acrimonious), please let it drop and get back to discussing Dawn visiting Ceres.

Is this a forum user statement or a moderator statement? There really is no way to tell. I guess we get to pick.

[Red Iron Crown]

It's a moderator statement.

[sal_vager]

2.3 Forbidden messages

D, Messages that purposefully change the subject of conversation in a thread without a natural tie to the topic at hand

The comment was pertaining to the rules, so you can interpret it as such, now stay on topic please.

Dres is not Ceres.

[smjjames]

I wonder what minerals those colors represent in the false color map.

@sal, I don't think anybody said anything about dres?

[Camacha]

@sal, I don't think anybody said anything about dres?

Dres, dress, it is a pun, get it?

[lajoswinkler]

On topic, new Ceres image.

Edited June 1, 2015 by Red Iron Crown

[Frida Space]

Same old spots from same old altitude (13600 km) on May 7th. Yesterday, Dawn reached its new orbit at 4400 km of height above the surface. That's 3x the resolution in this image! Can't wait for the photos.

[Scotius]

Looking at this picture, i can't shake the feeling i'm looking at a very old surface. Flat, eroded craters, no mountains worth mentioning except that solitary peak. Compared to Ceres, Moon looks sharp and well defined. Mercury too, for that matter. Did Late Heavy Bombardment missed Ceres completely?

[SargeRho]

Ceres is a fraction of the size of the Moon or Mercury. It's slightly smaller than Charon.