Seeing (Infra)Red

I’m continually amazed at the added beauty of the world when we are allowed to view it from a point beyond our usual sensory range.

Do you know why plants are green? It’s because they reflect green light more intensely than other colors. If anything, that kind of makes them not green. If it doesn’t contribute to photosynthesis, they have no use for it. And although we can’t see it with our limited vision, they also eschew the infrared. 

Andrew Shurtleff has made a stunning time-lapse showcasing the world as viewed in near-infrared. The light-sensitive chips of digital cameras can sense these wavelengths outside human vision (near-infrared being about 800-2000 nm wavelengths compared to our 400-700 nm visual range). With the right kind of video editing, that infrared world comes alive like a planet painted from pure ice. The leafy material appears white due to its intense reflection of infrared light.

Holy wow.

Infrared photography has been used for decades to study vegetation. Kodak’s infrared-sensitive Aerochrome film paints the plant world in an eerie dusting of pink that you’ll have to see to believe. And NASA, whose scientists use the entirety of the electromagnetic spectrum to paint pictures of our world and others in Pepto-pink, create amazing works of Earth as art using infrared filters:

(via Bad Astronomy)

Source: Slate

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