[Cucoulkrory]

Originally posted by DanS
AFAIK, false color only gets you so far. The Earth is more beautiful than anything you would paint. The goal is to put something in orbit that would replace an interstellar probe. You want full visual impact.

How big would a telescope need to be to replace an interstellar probe? Are we talking miles? Meters? AUs? What our brains perceive as color is just the assignment of a particular color to a range of EM Wavelengths. False color is just an artificial shift of the color to EM Wavelength range matching.

If we didn't tell you it was false color, how would you ever know the difference?

[Lkemybab]

That an unfair question, considering that we don't often see side-by-sides. We either see optical pictures of Earth or we see false color images of the stars. Do interplanetary probes use false color liberally?

[Inconykic]

Originally posted by pchang
The problem is that working by hand in space is pretty tough. Last time I tried the spacesuit gloves, it was very hard for me to manipulate tools (compared to no gloves). Perhaps they have made advances in spacesuits since then. No, but they are making advances in habitat diameters. For instance, let's pretend that Bigelow Aerospace builds an inflatable habitat with suitable atmosphere (basically, a spacecraft dock). Piece together your mirror by hand. Depressurize the dock and launch.

Inflatable habitats give you maybe 1.5x or 1.7x the diameter of regular habitats. So let's say that a space dock launched on the Ares V would have a max diameter of 12 meters x 1.7 = 20 meters.

[Pjayjukr]

Originally posted by pchang
Once you get past Jupiter, its too dark to use real color. I must admit that some of the recent interplanetary probe images (Saturn?) have been pretty amazing.

[DeedPatmeda]

ITYM, equivalent images to what a 100 meter telescope (i.e., 100 meters times 50,000) can take of Jupiter?

[BamSaitinypap]

Originally posted by DanS
AFAIK, false color only gets you so far. The Earth is more beautiful than anything you would paint. The goal is to put something in orbit that would replace an interstellar probe. You want full visual impact.

How big would a telescope need to be to replace an interstellar probe? Are we talking miles? Meters? AUs? False color doesn't mean you have to "paint".
You can get beautiful pictures in false color.

[Wheegiabe]

I got out of grad school at MIT (aeronautics and astronautics) and started working as a government contractor. I never worked directly for NASA/JPL, but I was loaned out to them for several projects dealing with space sensors and modifying interstellar probes. I got disenchanted with working on government projects and went totally commercial. I am now a sales engineer. I sell expensive network/application appliances to large companies.

[WXQMQFIr]

If he's happier, it's worthwhile.

[ENGINESSQ]

Originally posted by pchang


I actually have to make the equipment work in the customer's environment. However, I get to rely on a high salary as well as juicy commissions to make it all worthwhile. That sounds a lot more interesting than the typical 'sales' position actually.