“Viking I This is a color camera test strip on the Viking I lander’s color bars, this device helps calibrate the color TV camera for sending back true color of the Martian surface.”
Yet another well-crafted, thought out & succinct NASA description.
As a handful of the less than a handful of you that stumbled on this post might recall, the first published color Viking 1 lander photograph featured a blue sky. This was corrected and reissued a day or two later.
So, in this test photo – which shows the color calibration chart – the sky (taking into account the yellowing of the overall image) is definitely blue…at a minimum...‘bluish’. So, wouldn’t/shouldn’t that have been ‘caught’ in this image? I mean, if you get the colors right on the color calibration chart, wouldn’t that have automatically meant the rest of the colors in the image would also be correct, i.e., NOT blue??? I don’t get it.
Interesting:
www.donaldedavis.com/PARTS/MARSCLRS.html
Credit: “Don Davis: Space Artist and Animator” website
Also:
www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia16800.html
Finally, maybe the answer lies within the following, but I sure as hell ain’t reading the whole thing:
gillevin.com/pdf/5555-29.PDF
Note also the black grid pattern on the lander’s near pristine white surface, meant to gauge dust deposition both from the soil sampler depositing material in the experiment intakes on top of the lander deck and deposition by atmospheric dust. Earlier during this first Viking year on Mars, there were two great dust storms, the most intense lasting about 90 sols.
