> NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured this sand-capped butte, nicknamed “Miraflores,” estimated to be about 20 feet (6 meters) tall, on June 11, 2026. The surrounding area includes an expanse of terrain covered in surface features called polygons.
> The color was adjusted to match the lighting conditions as the human eye would see it if a person were standing on the surface of the Red Planet.
Is the non-adjusted color version available anywhere?
GMoromisato•Aug 12, 2026
I don't know, but note that the raw, unadjusted images are no more "authentic" than the color-adjusted ones.
Mastcam uses a Bayer RGB matrix, very similar to a consumer digital camera. Effectively, each "pixel" of the matrix has an R, G, or B color filter in front of it. I don't know the specific wavelength response of each filter, but it's likely to be very close to a high-end consumer camera.
This is different from (e.g.,) Hubble images, which (a) are captured through non-RGB filters, and (b) use long exposures far beyond what a human eye would see.
7 Comments
From https://www.nasa.gov/missions/mars-science-laboratory/curios...
Is the non-adjusted color version available anywhere?
Mastcam uses a Bayer RGB matrix, very similar to a consumer digital camera. Effectively, each "pixel" of the matrix has an R, G, or B color filter in front of it. I don't know the specific wavelength response of each filter, but it's likely to be very close to a high-end consumer camera.
This is different from (e.g.,) Hubble images, which (a) are captured through non-RGB filters, and (b) use long exposures far beyond what a human eye would see.
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/msl-curiosity/location-map/