Galloway Forest Park in Scotland has picked up an international award as one of the best places for stargazing in the world. The 300sq mile Forestry Commission site has been commended for its dark skies and named one of the best places in the world for stargazing.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8362265.stm
So where do the stars go in the daytime? The answer is that they are still there of course. It is a nice reminder that our colour vision is more about contrast than about absolute intensities. With old TV sets when they were switched off the screens were grey; but when they were turned on it would be possible to see some really dark blacks. But the screen cannot emit light light than when it is turned off! So the black looks black because of contrast, not simply because of the amount of light emitted or not emitted.
Against the dark skies of night the stars contrast and appear bright – during the day, the skies are much brighter because of the sun and though the light from the stars is just as intense as it is at night the contrast conditions are very different.
This week I attended IS&T’s 17th Color Imaging Conference in Albuquerque – http://www.imaging.org/IST/conferences/cic/
Attendance was a little lower than normal (because of the recession) but the quality of the conference was certainly not down on previous years. In fact, it was one of the best CICs for a while. I would recommend the conference to anyone with an interest in digital colour or colour imaging – the next conference will be November 2010 in San Antonio, Texas. The two things I like best about the conference are the content (as usual I came away with several new ideas that I can’t wait to get back and try) and the people. It’s a really friendly bunch of people and a great place to meet all those great colour scientists whose papers and books you’ve read.
Next year I may offer a short course in MATLAB. The short courses are held on the day or two before the conference starts proper.
As for the location – Albuqueque. Well, a little disappointing, to be honest. It’s a place I always wanted to visit. It sounds so exotic but in the end it is about as exotic as Huddersfield. It’s true that Old Town Albuquerque (where the conference was held) is interesting and quite qaint. However, I just walked down Route 66 into the downtown area today and it was disappointing to say the least. I think I saw the future of UK cities today - with the downtown area boarded up and empty and everyone in shopping malls that are 8 miles out of town and only accessible by car.
To read more views about the conference go to twitter and look for #cic17.
See you there next year?
East Japan Railway Co. has spent £100,000 fitting out all 29 stations on Tokyo’s central train loop, the Yamanote Line, with the strong bulbs.
The operators believe they will emit a soothing glow, despite the absence of any scientific proof that the method reduces suicides.
Mizuki Takahashi, a therapist involved with the project, said: “We associate the colour with the sky and the sea.
“It has a calming effect on agitated people, or people obsessed with one particular thing, which in this case is committing suicide.”
A total of 68 people threw themselves in front of trains in the 12 months until March, up from 42 in the same period the year before. The lights will be hung at the end of each platform, a spot where people are most likely to jump to their deaths.
See http://tinyurl.com/ydocbh6
Cryptic coloration is the most common form of camouflage, found to some extent in the majority of species. The simplest way is for an animal to be of a colour similar to its surroundings.
The female Misumena vatiaspider switches her body colour over the course of days depending on the flower where she lurks. This is often cited as an example of cryptic coloration. However, according to a new paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a white spider on a white flower doesn’t catch more prey than a white spider moved to a yellow flower. Nor does a yellow spider on a yellow flower get a colour-coordination bonus. The study may shatter the myth of crypsis by colour matching in crab spiders. For further details see http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/49079/title/Textbook_case_of_color-changing_spider_reopened
The colour of the universe is …..
beige!!
Astrophysicists Karl Glazebrook and Ivan Baldry took light measurements from more than 200,000 galaxies, broke them down into their constituent colours and then averaged the colours out to produce a single shade visible to the human eye. The result was beige. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2009/nov/04/pass-notes-the-universe
Staying on the space theme, One week ago, the MESSENGER spacecraft transmitted to Earth the first high-resolution image of Mercury by a spacecraft in over 30 years. MESSENGER’s Wide Angle Camera is equipped with 11 narrow-band color filters, in contrast to the two visible-light filters and one ultraviolet filter that were on Mariner 10’s vidicon camera. By combining images taken through different filters in the visible and infrared, the MESSENGER data allow Mercury to be seen in a variety of high-resolution color views not previously possible. MESSENGER’s eyes can see far beyond the color range of the human eye, and the colors seen in the accompanying image are somewhat different from what a human would see.
The color image was generated by combining three separate images taken through WAC filters sensitive to light in different wavelengths; filters that transmit light with wavelengths of 1000, 700, and 430 nanometers (infrared, far red, and violet, respectively) were placed in the red, green, and blue channels, respectively, to create this image.
I sometimes begin a series of student lectures on colour with the question – how many colours are there? At least one student always answers: three! In fact, this week in my lecture when I asked this question the first three or four answers were all three.
I can see where the idea of three comes from since the number three is ubiquitous in colour. We have three different classes of cones in the retina of our eyeballs – each with maximum sensitivity at a different wavelength. As a direct consequence of this trichromacy we use colour monitors with three primaries (RGB), colour printers with three primaries (CMY – ok, sometimes black as well but there’s a good reason for that), and there is a misconception that there are three primary colours from whose mixtures it is possible to make every other colour – see http://colourware.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/what-is-a-colour-primary/
I think that the number of colours that we can see is about 10 million; maybe less, but certainly millions. However, there are arguments that the true number may be much greater than this. See, for example, Mark Fairchild’s article – http://www.cis.rit.edu/fairchild/WhyIsColor/files/ExamplePage.pdf.
However, even the people thinking about colour mixing and three primaries must surely be aware that they have seen more than three colours. Indeed, were probably wearing more than three colours! So why do they respond with three? Well, it could be that they misunderstand the question and think I am asking about primaries (perhaps because they think the real question I am asking is too hard and nobody in their right mind would ask it). Or it could be that they equate the word colour with physical colorants. One of the most interesting – but also frustrating – things in field is that even the name of the field – colour - means different things to different people. Is colour something physical? Is it something you experience? Or is it simply whether something is red, yellow or blue etc; in other words, another term for what I would call hue?
This probably explains why we find the following text on this webpage – http://english.kompas.com/read/xml/2009/10/29/06125368/The.Shrimps.That.Can.See.in.Twelve.Colors:
It literally says that shrimps see 12 colours whereas, elsewhere on the page, it says that humans see 3 colours. Despite this irritating lack of precision in the writing the article is quite interesting and describes the surprisingly complex nature of shrimp colour vision.
This is meant to be a serious blog. However, today is 31st October – Halloween. At least 50 children visited my house tonight – not all at the same time I might add – and each was given a small chocolate bar. I prefer the treat to the trick.
Given that it is Halloween I thought I would share the latest in Pumpkin technology – a remote controlled colour-changing pumpkin.
You can see a video of it in all its glory on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LihQ0xOvLo&feature=player_embedded
New Scientist recently undertook an informal study to see if red is off-putting in a testing environment.
They set up two quizzes, each consisting of the same 15 anagrams. One quiz was predominantly red and the other blue.
On every attempt to access the article, a pop-up appeared requesting that you take part in the test. The colour of the text and border of this box was randomly selected to be either blue or red, corresponding to the colour of the text and border of the anagram test to which it linked. They then gathered data on the click-through rate for both colours, and the relative success rate.
They got roughly the same follow-through rate for both colours – 8478 for red and 8550 for blue – so the colour of the pop-up did not seem to have an effect on how attractive a prospect it was to take part in the quiz.
They also found that the readers scored an average of 63 per cent in the quiz, irrespective of whether the text and boarder colours were red or blue.
See http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18071-colour-psychology-quiz-the-results.html
An interesting article in New Scientist has explored the influence of colour on the choices we make; how we act and think. The article – http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327232.400-winners-wear-red-how-colour-twists-your-mind.html?full=true - quotes research published in Psychologial Science that revealed that the colour of clothing worn by competitors in a taekwondo contest affects the decisions even by experienced referees. In short, competitors wearing red were awarded 13% more points than those dressed in blue
This builds on previous research published in Nature in 2005 – http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v435/n7040/full/435293a.html - that showed that between 55% and 62% of bouts in Olympic combat contests were won by competitors wearing red when in fact red and blue should have won 50% each if colour had no effect. Robert Barton, from Durham University (UK) has argued that the colour red could influence the mind of the referee but could also affect the mental state and performance of the competitor.
Interestingly, 38 of the last 63 top division soccer titles in England have been won by teams in red (Manchester, United, Arsenal, Liverpool) and goalkeepers feel more confident about saving a penalty from a player in a white short than in a red one. Both of these facts were taken from papers published in Journal of Sports Sciences.
Almost eight years back when Japanese consumer electronics company Sony Corporation and Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson forged a partnership to make cell phones, an artist designed the liquid-eye crystal logo of Sony Ericsson on a napkin in a restaurant. It had just one colour — emerald green.
Last month, Sony Ericsson decided to add seven new colours to the logo in keeping with the change in the idea of entertainment and the convergence of devices over these years. The company also adopted the Sony brand message ‘make.believe’ in all consumer communication to reinforce its entertainment credentials and collaboration with the Sony Group.
Sony Ericsson will also expand the appeal of its ‘liquid identity’ logo “by not only adding the new colour variations but also a new ‘liquid energy’ flowing from the logo to make it more playful and visually appealing for the digital arena”. Sony Ericsson currently distributes its brand primarily through its 47 “experience” stores (which it plans to expand), Sony Centres and Exclusives (smaller stores), multi-brand outlets like Chroma and “mom and pop” stores.
