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Originally Posted by RGClark
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.
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The uncertainty is there because the full data hasn't been processed to pull out the relative exposure times and combine the images properly. So the real problem is they are releasing the images too early. ;-)
The reality is it will take time for them to sort the data and publish the exposure times, but they will. When they do, then it will be a lot easier to combine the grayscales for "true color" images. Of course, there's still the matter of which filters are used. One of the filters that is often used for Red actually extends into infrared, so that skews the image content slightly.
If you want to take the image samples simultaneously, that's fine, it would eliminate the step of waiting for the exposure time data to be processed and made available. But that still doesn't eliminate the problem of picking your filter ranges.