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Re: (meteorobs) Recording - sound & colour
At 11:39 PM 11/21/96 EST, you wrote:
>Greetings -
>
>I've been enjoying the rather humourous comments about tape recorders and
colour
>perception :)
..... you were talking about tape recorders and went on to say...
> I decided on the small one as I could keep it warmer under the sleeping
bag, tucked close to body
>parts.
That raised some interesting thoughts in my mind, but I think I had better
talk about your second subject.....
>Change of topic here - from sound to colour perception. I am always amazed at
>the colours others see that I don't. Most of my Leonids were white. I called
>several yellow. For me to see colour in the night sky, it has to be really
>intense.
>
>>
>I can just about remember on my fingers each of the coloured meteors I've seen
>over the years - an intense slow red one dribbling parallel to the horizon for
30 or so degrees, a brilliant gold fireball that burst, died, and then exploded
>in a shower of individual pieces that I could see falling down, and several
>blue-green meteors down my (untinted) windshield while driving. I have never
>seen an orange meteor in my life.
>
>Could meteor colour perception be quantified? Interesting question. I don't
>think so. Everyone's perception is different. You could test a person's
colour
>perception ahead of time, but I don't think you could relate it to meteor
>colour. And - I don't know how a person's daytime colour perception would
>relate to their nighttime colour perception, when their eyes are not 'stopped
>down' as much, due to lower light levels.
>
>I actually think about colour a lot, and how it relates to other things in
>nature, and astronomy. There was a vivid fuchsia flower bed outside my office
>building this past summer, and every time I walked by it, my first thought was
>... I wonder how an octopus would see a comet !! ... and you wondered what
>wavelength I was on....
>
>So much for perception... I tend to see things in a different light :)
>
>- Cathy
> Great White North
I agree with what you say about colour (I'm a Limey, really) perception,
with the difference that I have yet
to see anything in the night sky even remotely green in color, as I perceive
it. I don't have as much meteor observing experience as most people reading
this, but if I had to precisely describe the color of meteors that I see I
would say that none are pure white, although most are very close to it. The
majority are slightly off white, with a faint buff or light bronze hue. It
is interesting that Mars is usually described as the red planet, but to me
it looks a dull bronze color, even through a telescope. I would never have
thought of describing it as red.
Turquoise and teal are also interesting colors. My wife, and I, frequently
disagree whether indian turquoise jewelry is more green, or more blue. She
usually favors green while I say it is more blue. How do I decide what is
green and what is blue? Well, I start off by picturing in my mind a pure,
saturated green and gradually change the hue towards blue. There comes a
phase when the color changes from a bluey-green to a greeny- blue. It is
this transition from a definite green to a definite blue that seems to be
very subjective. I was just experimenting with a paint and draw program, on
my computer, in which I can select an almost infinite number of color
mixes. I found that a ratio of 255:255 green:blue quite definitely looked
light blue to me. I had to reduce this ratio to 255:210 before it started
to look the slightest bit green to me. This may be an artifact of the
computer, or the monitor, but it did seem to reflect the way I see those
colors.
Your point about daylight and dark vision is also well taken. It is not
possible to make a direct comparison because you would need both light and
dark at the same time. Any attempt to switch from one to the other, to
make comparisons, would be thwarted by the need for your vision to become
dark adapted each time. Another factor would be the fact that during
daylight your eyes would be using their cones, while in the dark they would
be on their rods. There could be a difference in perception between these
two systems.
Well, those are my thoughts. Does anybody else agree?
Ron