Absinthe & Cookies (a bit bitter, a bit sweet)

I suspect it's a matter of bandwidth. 8 (or even 4) versus 24 bits per pixel. More pixels in an array are far more preferable to greater color depth. I also suspect that false-color images will be available shortly, just that nobody's had the time to process them yet. Remember when Mariner hit 'way back when, the first shots were B&W. But they managed color soon enough.

They could very well be using a high-resolution monochrome CCD with changeable filters, which for still subjects would produce higher quality images than a CCD with fixed colour filters. So the first few pictures would be black and white because that's quicker to take and to transmit.

But that's just a guess. I really have no idea.

A commenter on Justene's blog said that color pics are on the way, but the first round are B/W because the "high gain antenna" wasn't deployed yet, but would be soon. We'll see; I hope he's right.

These pictures are fakes from the 1960's.....NASA is a sham. Everyone knows that.

I know that one probably has nothing to do with the other, but it just seems that if we can send colour pics back and forth via cheesy little cellphones, a multi-million dollar Mars spacecraft should be able to.

Calblog husband was at the casino when Spirit landed and I called to tell him. (We live a mile from JPL and get extra excited). Someone at the table who overheard him truly believed that Spirit and the moon landings were all a sham.

Hey the holographic images displayin' in my flyin' car are all in color. Are ya sure you actually have made the jump into the 21st Century? ;)

They expect the first high res color images to start downloading this evening (Monday). It has to do with the bandwidth limitations of the low gain antenna. It's a little different reaching the nearest cell tower with your phone, versus reaching across several hundred million miles from Mars to Earth...

This site has regular updates to the mission.

I have and update. The reason for the slow transmission of the high resolution color images is that the high gain antenna is not currently in use, due to some concerns about current spikes in the actuator. They want to test it out before putting it in service. This info is from the site I linked above:

"The other issue involves Spirit's high-gain antenna. During deployment, a motor that elevates the antenna so it can lock onto Earth showed very brief current spikes indicating slightly rougher-than-expected operation. Tests are planned to further characterize the issue to make sure routine operations later don't cause damage. Until the tests are complete, mission planners are using Spirit's low-gain antenna and UHF communications sessions with the Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey orbiters."