this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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SpacePics
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I mean, if it's not a true color photo and they added the blue for informational display reasons, then the blueness of this photo isn't really a meaningful part of it to get excited about. (Sorry to be a downer.)
With that said, this photo IS something to get excited about because (based on the post title) it shows a part of the planet in a way never seen before, and it shows it in astounding clarity. And i absolutely agree that NASA science missions are enormously worthwhile.
False color can also just be a more visible way to display a range of frequencies that wouldn't be visible to the human eye anyway. Take the images from the James Webb Telescope for example. The JWT operates in the infrared, but it can see more than just one infrared wavelength and can differentiate between them. Rather than showing three or more grayscale images, you can layer them over each other in different colors or hues and create a single image. If you need the individual grayscale images, they exist, but that's not what usually ends up in communities like this one.