What do you get when you combine a slow on-call day, a copy of Photoshop, and an unhealthy obsession with the Mars mission? The first color images of the Meridiani Planum, courtesy of the Opportunity rover. Using today’s raw images and Kano’s info about the color wavelengths that correspond to each of the rover’s camera filters, it was easy to create the color versions, and while they’re not true-color — NASA hasn’t provided the red channels — they aren’t all that far off, and they’re much more satisfying to look at than the black-and-whites that are all over the newswires. (Note that I also lightened the midtones, since the raw images are pretty dark in the visible range.)