I really dislike the current method used on orbital and lander
spacecraft for color imaging. It consists of taking separate images
through three different visible light color filters representing Red,
Green, Blue light and combining them into a single color image.
The problem is calibrating the combination of these images taken
separately. So we have a spacecraft in orbit about Mars in Mars
Odyssey supposed to be able to take color images but there is so much
uncertainty in the combination of the colors that we've only had a few
visible light color images released.
And we have two lander spacecraft on Mars supposed to image in color
and each color image release creates controversy in the accuracy of
the color combinations used. It makes you long for the simple color
video cameras used on the Apollo moon missions.
The reason this method is used is that by using all the pixels in the
camera for a single color range you can gather more data in that
frequency range. However, there has been a method developed that
allows you to collect the same amount of data using fewer numbers of
pixels that might finally allow us to collect the full color range
simultaneously as with color video cameras:

Spider Eyes For Martian Robots
by Anil Ananthaswamy
San Francisco - March 28 2001
"The vibrating eyes of jumping spiders have inspired a new breed of
vision sensors that could give the next generation of Mars rovers
sharper eyesight, say researchers in California."
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-general-01d.html

Visual sensor with resolution enhancement by mechanical vibrations
Koch Lab
Ania Mitros and Oliver Landolt
http://www.klab.caltech.edu/~ania/re...ib_retina.html



Bob Clark