"This image represents the first view of another planet from a vantage point in space. It was taken on July 15th, 1965, when the space probe Mariner 4 flew by only 6,118 miles from the surface of Mars.

After the flyby of the planet it would take several hours for computers to process a real image. So while they were waiting, the engineers thought of different ways of taking the 1’s and 0’s from the actual data and create an image. After a few variations, it seemed most efficient to print out the digits and color over them based upon how bright each pixel was. So Mr. Grumm went to a local art store and asked for a set of chalk with different shades of gray. The art store replied that they “did not sell chalk” (as that was apparently too low for them, only convenience stores sold “chalk”), but they did have colored pastels. Richard did not want to spend a lot of time arguing with them, so he bought the pastels (actual pastels seen below), had the 1’s and 0’s printed out on ticker tape about 3in wide, and his team colored them by their brightness level (color key seen below).

Though he used a brown/red color scheme, the thought that Mars was red did not enter his mind. He really was looking for the colors that best represented a grey scale, since that was what they were going to get anway. It is uncanny how close his color scheme is to the actual colors of Mars. It's as if they came right out of current images of the planet. I’ve seen some of the other color schemes he tried and it could have been green or purple!"

All of this is shamelessly lifted from directedplay.com/first_ tv_image_of_mars.html, so thanks for that.

I recently became aware of this through a bbc documentary, I defy you to find a better coming together (unfortunately I used the word synthesis in my last post...it was wasted) of art and science.