True Color
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Rosetta's camera takes the first color image of its comet
If you thought the comet where Philae recently touched down (multiple times) was steel gray in color, we've got news for you -- it's actually a juicy red-brown. Despite the success of the orbiting Rosetta probe, it launched in 2004 so its camera doesn't have the latest tech. As a result, all images of the Manhattan-sized rock have been strictly gray-scale so far. But an upcoming research paper has revealed new images using the full spectrum of Rosetta's OSIRIS Narrow Angle Camera. The image appears blurry because each color slice was shot from a slightly different angle as Rosetta transited around the comet.
Daily iPad App: True Color is a color recipe tool for artists and digital designers
Finding the right mix of colors to get that perfect shade can be a challenge at times, especially when you are trying to match a color in a photo or a digital drawing. To help you get the right blend, you can use True Color from Snickerdoodle Software. True Color is a color-mixing tool with a series of primary color dials -- blue, red, yellow and white -- that you can use to mix your perfect color. Every move of the dial changes the color on the screen, allowing you to carefully adjust each primary dial to get just the right blend. Once you have created your color of choice, you can save that recipe for later use. True Color is more than a standalone color mixer. The app also can be used to match a color in a photo. Just import the image into the app and grab the target color using a dropper. The app will then generate the correct color recipe automatically. It's a huge timesaver to not have to manually adjust the color and eyeball it to see if it matches your photo. Like other recipes, you can save these photo grab recipes for later use. True Color isn't a do-everything color tool -- it's a basic color mixer that does one thing and does it well. It's great for artists who want to play with colors without wasting precious paint or pulling out all the tools needed to work on a real canvas. It's also perfect for folks who enjoy color theory and just want to mix things up on the fly True Color is available in the iOS App Store for US$1.99. It's a universal app that works on the iPad and iPhone.
Visualized: an Earth-year through stunning NASA imagery (video)
Our planet had kind of a rough year in 2012, but thanks to its array of satellites and a certain floating lab, NASA documented every divine and terrifying moment from afar. On top of the usual beauty shots and time-lapses rendered by the ISS and true-color satellites, NASA also showed some spectacular data and modeling visualizations of atmospheric movement, storms and ocean salinity. That helps even the densest of us understand how hurricanes form, gulf streams flow and arctic ice breaks off and drifts seaward. But enough talk -- if a picture equals a thousand words, there are three million of them in the two minute video, after the break.
