Using RGB Channel Data to Process Raw Images from Mars Perseverance Rover

Learn something new everyday! I was just scrolling on Twitter when I saw my astronomy crush Will Gater tweet about using the raw black and white images from the Perseverance Rover on Mars to create colored images. Here's how to do it yourself, and a little about how it works.My color processed image from Mars!Any 24-bit color image is really made up of 3 individual 8-bit images - one for red, one for green, and one for blue (Wikipedia). These are referred to as RGB channel data. But how can a black and white image represent a color? The black and white images show how prominent the color is - the white represents the color and the black represents the absence of the color. So the brighter the image, the more of that color is present. All you have to do to get a color photo out of the individual 8-bit images is the combine them. All the information is already right there, you just have to tell the computer which black and white image represents which color channel. Alright so the first thing you need is raw RGB channel images from Mars. Luckily NASA has tons of free images ...