Panoramic Views of Mars
Last month, some gorgeous new high-resolution images of the Martian surface were released, taken by the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Unfortunately, the timing of the releases coincided with some rather significant events, such as the news of possible H20 reservoirs on Saturn’s moon Enceladus and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s successful orbital insertion, so I’m thinking they didn’t receive as much attention as they would have otherwise.
I was just spending some time admiring the beauty of these Martian vistas and wanted to pass them on for anyone who’d not stumbled across them… the terrain is fascinating. Make it a point to click on the full-resolution JPGs:
- ‘Payson’ Panorama by Opportunity
- ‘Payson’ Panorama in False Color
- ‘Gibson’ Panorama by Spirit at ‘Home Plate’
- ‘Gibson’ Panorama by Spirit at ‘Home Plate’ (False Color)
- Spirit’s ‘Paige’ Panorama of the Interior of ‘Home Plate’
- Spirit’s ‘Paige’ Panorama of the Interior of ‘Home Plate’ (False Color)
My favorite of the batch:
Image Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / USGS / Cornell
On Feb. 19, 2006, the 758th Martian day of exploration of the red planet by NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit, the rover acquired this panoramic view of the interior of “Home Plate,” a circular topographic feature amid the “Columbia Hills.” This view, called the “Paige” panorama, is from the top of Home Plate. It shows layered rocks exposed at the edge as well as dark rocks exhibiting both smooth and sponge-like “scoriaceous” textures. To the east from this vantage point, “McCool Hill” looms on the horizon. At the base of McCool Hill is a reddish outcrop called “Oberth,” which Spirit may explore during the rapidly approaching Martian winter. “Von Braun” and “Goddard” hills are partially visible beyond the opposite rim of Home Plate.
The limited spatial coverage of this panorama is the result of steadily decreasing power available to the rover for science activities as the Martian winter arrives and the sun traces a lower path across the sky. The rover team anticipates that the north-facing slopes of McCool Hill should sufficiently tilt the rover’s solar panels toward the sun to allow Spirit to survive the winter.
The view covers about 230 degrees of terrain around the rover. Spirit’s panoramic camera (Pancam) took 72 separate images of this scene with four different Pancam filters. This is an approximately true-color rendering using the Pancam’s 75-nanometer, 535-nanometer, and 432-nanometer filters. Image-to-image seams have been eliminated from the sky portion of the mosaic to better simulate the vista a person standing on Mars would see.
4 Responses to “Panoramic Views of Mars”
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Woah, man, that is totally freakin cool.
My imagination is soaring….hoowhee those are great images! I want to go there.
Thanks Wolve, I am relying on your blog more than I am looking at lots of sites. Somehow I trust you’ll come up with interesting stuff; I can’t seem to find the time to peruse everything lately, especially regarding politics (but that’s like a soap opera that one can pick up anytime, and the same actors are STILL doing the same silly things…not that I watch ‘em.)
very nice images of mars panoramic views. the surface formation is quite looking like earth, we have a great lands of stones and clays here unused, do you think that on mars ” the life was already there but ruined afterword, and the current situation is like ” these images”
:)
sunil
Glad you all enjoyed these views — I’d been meaning to post these for a while now but hadn’t had the opportunity (teehee) to work them in.
Sunil: the possibility of life having existed on Mars long ago (or at present) is most tantalizing, but we have to be patient and take things in stride. For the time being, we haven’t found any evidence of organisms on the red planet, past or present. Certainly more exploration of the surface (and below) will help put things in clearer perspective — and the missions planned in the near future should prove invaluable in that regard.
What I find most interesting about the imagery returned from Mars (like you mention) is that it reveals a landscape rather similar to our own — including strong evidence for a fair amount of water at one time, also volcanic activity in the distant past, sedimentation, layering, weathering and erosion… very familiar processes, just taking place on a planetary neighbor with some very different attrubutes. Further study of Mars will not only reveal additional clues about its past, but also tell us more about Earth and the other terrestrial planets in the process. That’s a very exciting aspect of planetary science.