Quote:
Originally Posted by RobF
Thanks for showing this great work Trevor. I too find the animations particularly entertaining and educational. I take my hat off at your tenacity capture these. It really is an "all or nothing" game I'm learning. No use losing attention halfway through a multi-hour data collection effort!
Fascinating to see the processing options between you and Mike too.
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Thanks Rob, glad you liked the animation.
I agree, it is most interesting to look at the various processing options for Mars.
I have been putting in considerable time of late researching this subject.
Given good seeing there really is no argument as to the correct path to follow, which would be RGB. Only RGB will give a fair representation of the elements that we want to capture on Mars. That is, the albedo features, surface detail and atmospheric detail.
Whenever another channel is either synthesized or added as a luminance channel, to create a more esthetically pleasing image, it is at the expense of some other real detail.
In the RGB that I posted on this thread, there is a white spot right on the edge of the NPC at the CM. This spot is not in the red channel, so is not surface detail such as frost. It is however, bright in the G and B channels. The researchers at ALPO Mars are most interested in this spot, which may be topographic cloud associated with the Korolev crater.
In the most excellent comparison done by Mike showing IRRGB and RRGB, this white spot disappears due to the change of bias brought about by adding another R or IR layer as a luminance channel.
Here in OZ Mars is poorly placed for this apparition, which is why IR works very well and it is nice to put together a Mars colour image with nice albedo detail but I do look forward to Mars being at a higher altitude in future apparitions to get a real rip snorter RGB. Until then I must admit, the temptation to go the esthetic route is high but I really dont want to lose detail of scientific value.