FOXNews.com - Planet Mercury Covered With Strange Blue Substance - Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News More images and data from this mission: NASA - MESSENGER Teleconference: More 'Hidden' Territory on Mercury Revealed
Anyone ever felt it was neat the first time they drove in another state? THIS-IS-A-PICTURE-OF-ANOTHER-FREAKING-PLANET-WITH-A-SUBSTANCE-WE-CAN'T-INDENTITFY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So this is real color, not false color? Given Mercury's proximity to the sun, I wonder if the crust isn't so thin that mineral deposits are visible on the surface. Mix in a few billion years of prolonged exposure to heat, and... there you are.
That is an absolutely beautiful image....though the universe is infinite, I always find it more interesting when Nasa chooses to focus on one of the planets in our system. To me, the baby steps are necessary before jumping out into the ocean. We need to learn all we can about the system we live in, before we go exploring others. Very neat find.
Well they already have a Rover vehicle for a man mission to mars. fits 2 people. Mars is teh most intriguing IMO.
duh... they're bubbles don't you know? [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLuriQYX1SY]YouTube - Sailor Mercury Bubbles Blast[/ame] Clearly the Japanese anime industry is light years ahead of NASA...
I used lapis for the stripes in my stone sailfish "Slash" I wonder which of the minerals actually cause the blue
always correcting me, do you float around the site just reading my posts and correcting them? i'm gonna pull the restraining order card again if you don't knock it off!
Right, but there's real color and false color when it comes to space imagery, so just saying color isn't quite as informative as it should be. It could be Lapis Lazuli, but are the conditions on Mercury conducive to its formation in the first place?
How much more specific does the mission site need to be? If the mission site said that the camera captured "high resolution color images",that leaves little interpretation in mind. False colored images are not captured by a camera. Those images are captured in whatever format the camera is capable and later converted.
That's what I mean, it wasn't specific, that's all. So it's real color, which is great. I still think the blue is an enormous metal or mineral deposit that's simply showing on the surface. Could be Lapis Lazuli, could be something else. How much do we know about the conditions of Mercury's formation?
False color images are most often pictures taken in spectrums not visable to human eyes. For instance.. in order to "see" infrared, we must assign colors or intensities to the image to make it visable to our eye. Another version takes various wavelengths and isolates them via filter. This allows us to identify some elements and compounds as they reflect specific wavelengths back to us. Many of the deep space images you see are combinations of images taken in different frequencies to highlight things like gases that would invisable to the "naked" eye. Hope this helps.
ok, it's kind if ambigious, they are not really clear on which version they are showing us. from this, It seems that the pretty blue images we are looking at are the "enhanced" version.
The space craft has multiple cameras and filters onboard including a narrow range camera, high resolution, star tracking and a color camera with 11 filters. What you are seeing is not exactly what you would see if you were to hang out in space just above the planet and observe Mercury because the human eye is not capable of seeing as broad a range of colors as is a camera. Messenger Spacecraft Images of Mercury - Mercury -- In Color!!
Actually I believe that the perceived blue color is due to frequent volcanic activity .Lapis Lazuli is not associated with that . Volcanic activity was very important to Earths development .The CO2 created by them was important in overcoming some of Earths Ice ages some of which were very long. The spectrum analyzers are showing the color to be blue but if you were looking directly at it it would probably be Grey in color just like lava would look gray once it has cooled on Earth .