Billion-Pixel View of Mars Comes From Curiosity Rover
June 19, 2013
This is a reduced version of panorama from NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity with 1.3 billion pixels in the full-resolution version. It shows Curiosity at the “Rocknest” site where the rover scooped up samples of windblown dust and sand. Curiosity used three cameras to take the component images on several different days between Oct. 5 and Nov. 16, 2012. Viewers can explore this image with pan and zoom controls at http://mars.nasa.gov/bp1/. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS › Full image and caption› Curiosity gallery› Curiosity videos
PASADENA, Calif. – A billion-pixel view from the surface of Mars, from NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity, offers armchair explorers a way to examine one part of the Red Planet in great detail. Continue reading →
This color panorama shows a 360-degree view of the landing site of NASA’s Curiosity rover, including the highest part of Mount Sharp visible to the rover. That part of Mount Sharp is approximately 12 miles (20 kilometers) away from the rover.
This image is from a series of test images to calibrate the 34-millimeter Mast Camera on NASA’s Curiosity rover. It was taken on Aug. 23, 2012 and looks south-southwest from the rover’s landing site. The gravelly area around Curiosity’s landing site is visible in the foreground. Farther away, about a third of the way up from the bottom of the image, the terrain falls off into a depression (a swale). Beyond the swale, in the middle of the image, is the boulder-strewn, red-brown rim of a moderately-sized impact crater. Father off in the distance, there are dark dunes and then the layered rock at the base of Mount Sharp. Some haze obscures the view, but the top ridge, depicted in this image, is 10 miles (16.2 kilometers) away. Scientists enhanced the color in one version to show the Martian scene under the lighting conditions we have on Earth, which helps in analyzing the terrain. A raw version is also available. The 34-millimeter Mastcam takes images with lower resolution, but a much wider field of view than the 100-millimeter Mastcam. A sharper version of the same scene from the telephoto 100-millimeter Mastcam can be seen at PIA16104. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
A chapter of the layered geological history of Mars is laid bare in this postcard from NASA’s Curiosity rover. The image shows the base of Mount Sharp, the rover’s eventual science destination. This image is a portion of a larger image taken by Curiosity’s 100-millimeter Mast Camera on Aug. 23, 2012. See PIA16104. Scientists enhanced the color in one version to show the Martian scene under the lighting conditions we have on Earth, which helps in analyzing the terrain. For scale, an annotated version of the figure highlights a dark rock that is approximately the same size as Curiosity. The pointy mound in the center of the image, looming above the rover-sized rock, is about 1,000 feet (300 meters) across and 300 feet (100 meters) high. › Annotated version Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS