

First full color Curiosity Mars Panoramic Pictures - littlesparkvt
http://spaceindustrynews.com/nasa-mars-curiosity-first-color-panorama-pictures-of-gale-crater/1121/

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randomdrake
Maybe it's just me, but can I make a request to others who are interested in
the NASA Curiosity rover? Can we please stop linking to blog-o-spam and link
to the real sites, from NASA[1]? The sources are clearly provided, but the
blog doesn't bother to link to the actual, full-resolution picture page[2],
which provides full-resolution JPG or TIFF and additional information, in any
way. I'm as interested in the mission as any other self-respecting hacker, but
I'm tired of having to click through every time to get to the actual site.
Considering the actual site contains real details and real pictures, from the
horses mouth, as it were, it seems like we should all be making an effort to
link to NASA whenever possible.

[1] - <http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?ImageID=4372>

[2] - <http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA16029>

Edit: if the blog, in question, has real value to add to what NASA is
supplying then, by all means, link to it. But for cases like this where the
link doesn't really provide anything additional and leaves out important links
like those to the NASA Photojournal page, it'd be better (IMHO) to link
directly to the NASA page.

~~~
nkoren
Actually, in this case I'm glad they didn't. Photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov has
gone, so I didn't have any way to see this image until finding this post on
HN.

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jerrya
A guy at FARK took the publically released "self-portrait" of Curiosity and
"stitched" it together to correct it. I am not sure what he did, but it looks
hugely better.

Original:
[http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/675130main_image_2331_946...](http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/675130main_image_2331_946-710.jpg)

Fixed:
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/keithgabryelski/7747623468/size...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/keithgabryelski/7747623468/sizes/o/in/photostream/)

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nollidge
Those are from vastly different source pictures, I think. The "original" was
from mostly thumbnails and a couple full-res pics, I believe, whereas the
"fixed" one is from the high-res pics they just released today. They just had
a press conference at 1pm ET/12pm CT today about the debris on top of
Curiosity, which you can see in those images.

Either way, that's a really nice stitch job!

~~~
jerrya
That's a possibility. The FARK thread is here
[http://www.fark.com/comments/7259728/Stitched-together-
by-a-...](http://www.fark.com/comments/7259728/Stitched-together-by-a-Farker-
with-loving-care-here-is-an-exclusive-version-of-Curiositys-self-portrait) and
you're correct, he doesn't say that's the original (and it does explain some
of the differences between the two) but he does call the first one: "what the
common folk got to see". Regarding the stitching, when asked, he said it was a
friend's proprietary software....

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nollidge
...And @MarsCuriosity JUST tweeted NASA's version of the stitch:
[http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia16027.ht...](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia16027.html)

Looks like some different distortion correction, cropping, and levels
correction was done between the two.

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anigbrowl
_This panorama mosaic was made of 130 images of 144 by 144 pixels each.
Selected full frames from this panorama, which are 1,200 by 1,200 pixels each,
are expected to be transmitted to Earth later._

Despite the 2mp sensor limitation, this project is already yielding some fine
imagery. I just hope people don't complain about it being a bit samey after a
while.

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nollidge
> I just hope people don't complain about it being a bit samey after a while.

Hopefully Curiosity will find some cool stuff once she starts ambling around.

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lallysingh
It's surprising how close old sci-fi moves got just by filming in southern
california.

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kibwen
_"The images in this panorama were brightened in the processing. Mars only
receives half the sunlight Earth does and this image was taken in the late
Martian afternoon."_

This is a fascinating aspect of Mars that I'd never considered. Half the
sunlight, but much less atmosphere... I wonder how much dimmer it is overall.

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sukuriant
Mars receives half the light that the Earth does?! That is a ton of light!

For you photographers out there, just think: Mars's "Sunny 16" is a "Sunny
11". That's not that much darker!

I sincerely thought that Mars would be pretty dark out there since it's
further from the sun. I was clearly wrong.

