well, i'm not sure if this is my first post or not. I've know about this place for a long time and always seemed like a good place to come to when I have my random questions. Strangely, I'm not here asking about membrane theory or super symmerty, which are topics I thought I'd come here for..... instead, I just got an update on my facebook wall from the science channel, showing a Mercury picture from MESSENGER.

Why am I having such a hard time finding true color pics of Mercury? What does it REALLY look like? I mean, I totally understand the reasoning for false color pics, usage of filters, photographing a wide range of wavelengths, or exaggerating color difference to show off detail. That's great, and I'm also interested in looking at those.

But what I'm more interested in, is how it would look if I were passing by in my heavy cruiser. Light is still light, whether it's coming through atmosphere or space. Can't they just...point and click? Set their filters and stuff to "normal" and take at least just one picture for us who want the unadulterated truth?

and if THERE is a true color pic already out there, then I'd appreciate it if you posted it.

Thank you!

Just a guess: Wouldn't the intensity of sunlight on Mercury be so great that the absorption capacity of materials would get saturated and reflection of all wavelengths would take place as a result?

No, that's silly.

The reason most pictures of mercury are black and white or labelled "false color" is because scientific instruments are compromises between making them as simple as possible and getting as much data as possible. As such, while there is lots of scientific data there is rarely enough data to allow high-precision color reproduction. Human color reproduction is highly technical which is why machine color matching at paint stores is only a recent innovation.

Typical astronomy "color" data includes spectral filters which don't closely correspond with human vision, includeing filters which are mostly sensitive to ultraviolet or infrared. Standard printing processes can then relabel that data so it looks blue or red, but that's what they mean by "false color."

http://mcdonaldobservatory.org/research/in...ment.php?i_id=9

http://astroprofspage.com/archives/1500

Mercury is probably mostly gray, like the moon: http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=236

In fact, the best color reproduction shows Mercury is very gray in visible light: http://spacespin.org/article.php/90502-mes...mercury-dynamic