Why are the Mars Rover pictures in black and white?

Why are all the raw Spirit and Opportunity rover pics in black and white? You would think with modern technology (the rovers launched in 2004) they would transmit color pics. So why do it in B%26amp;W?|||Most pictures (whether these are or not) taken from space craft are imaged with high quality monochrome sensors through various filters - if done through red/blue/green, etc., this allows producing color images, but it also allows doing UV and other influences. A monochrome sensor can have a much higher pixel count than a color sensor where not only is everything divided by three but there is more space in between sensor pixels.|||Actually ALL images, whether film or digital, are in black and white. In all photo and video processes three or more images made with different coloured filters are combined. Colour film is actually a sandwich of three photographic emulsions and two filters; colour video breaks images up into RGB channels. The images obtained from the rovers are made with much higher standards of filters than ordinary colour images, since they must be studied for scientific purposes. Some of these images are combined with very careful colour balance to get an accurate representation of the colours of the Martian surface and sky.





I'm amazed that most people are totally ignorant of how ALL colour imaging works!|||A lot of the images ARE in color.





Spirit and Opportunity carried multiple cameras. The color cameras were more cumbersome and used only when a rover had the opportunity (no pun intended) to sit still and take the time to get a nice panorama of the surrounding area. The B%26amp;W cameras were easier to use and therefore used more frequently to get data for navigation of the rover.|||They are in colour, well maybe the top quality images are in colour and the 'average' images are black and white to save internal memory fo the future|||taking scientific pictures means using a high-quality sensor that responds to all wavelengths of light, then shooting pictures through filters that select the wavelength you want.





pretty pictures are a by-product. science comes first.|||There NOT in Black and White. The ones I saw were in full color.