

First High-Resolution Color Mosaic of Curiosity's Mastcam Images - hybrid11
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2334.html

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virmundi
So I downloaded the high def picture and panned around. At first I was rather
underwhelmed. "Great, another desert landscape. Good use of a few million tax
payer dollars. We could go to Afghanistan and get the same picture for
cheaper.", I thought to myself.

Then I just let the whole scene soak in. I imagined talking with a founding
father about my life. "Sure, I've seen the surface of Mars. Blue rocks and red
dirt. Mountains in the back." This really opened my eyes. This is a high def
of another planet. I pulled it up on a computer that could hold all of the
written words in the time of the individual with whom I was imagining the
conversation. The whole thing is rather impressive and inspiring.

~~~
Sharlin
The images are a red herring. Yes, it's an inspiring engineering achievement
to land a thing on another planet that can snap pretty tourist photos. But
that is not the point. _Science_ is the point. The sophisticated geochemistry
instruments are the point.

~~~
virmundi
I know that's the point, but the science has to be sold to the public. Science
for the sake of science would be great, but the reality of the world is that
money is in finite supply. As a result you have to sell your dream/goal to get
it. I think these pictures, plus a bit better pr campaign by NASA could bring
her back to her former glory. Remember, the whole trip to the moon was a giant
PR program too. But look at all of the science we got from it.

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kellishaver
That's amazing.

The area toward the top center, where you can see the color striations in the
hills is, I think, the rover's primary destination.

I played with it a bit in Photoshop to attempt to correct for the atmospheric
haze and wound up with this: <http://orng.us/faquvj> which may be (probably
is) highly inaccurate, but it does make it very evident that there are a
variety of rock types and a good deal of exposed geological history there to
be sampled.

~~~
dangoldin
That's neat. Thanks for taking the effort to do that. How much of that is due
to distance vs haze though?

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kellishaver
Good point. It could very well be as much or more matter of aerial perspective
rather than atmospheric haze.

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cwe
So the sections of the horizon that are missing are the martian cities, yes?

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cwe
seriously, though, what's with the blacked-out sections?

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danparsonson
It's a mosaic so they're not blacked-out, they're sections where there is no
image data. Presumably they either haven't taken pictures of those parts of
the visual field, or the pictures aren't available or are unusable for some
reason.

Either that or, you know, maybe a bird drifted into shot ;-)

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jakeonthemove
Well, damn, it looks just like some desert landscape on Earth - nothing
surprising, but still really awesome!

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waterlesscloud
Originals here, in some cases clearer than the corresponding spots on the
mosaic. I suppose due to whatever method they use to project the images into a
cohesive whole.

<http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/>

~~~
leberwurstsaft
You're right, so I went ahead and recreated the panorama with the source
images. Output file is much clearer at 31,792 x 5,683 (~50MB).

You can find it here:
<https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B2Y0xU4gYdrLd1BFNXJiT1JacUE> (Use File -->
Download, beware of opening this file inside the browser…)

Edit: Was wrong link.

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balakk
The black strip in the top looks like a dried-up river valley. Or is it just
rock/soil patterns?

~~~
hybrid11
I was also wondering what that was, anyone know?

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dakrisht
Yeap, that's what it looks like to me. Wow.

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hexagonal
Huh, Curiosity uses the same Bill Nye calibration target/sundial as the
Spirit/Opportunity rovers.

[http://www.astrobio.net/interview/625/interview-with-bill-
ny...](http://www.astrobio.net/interview/625/interview-with-bill-nye-the-
sundial-guy)

(Hopefully this massive browser-crushing 10,000x5,904 jpeg will shut up the
endless legion of idiots who complained about "sub-iphone" picture quality.)

~~~
hnriot
The endless legions of idiots are actually right. The sensor on Curiosity is
of much power resolution than that of the iPhone. The way (as has been
explained a million times now) that Curiosity gets a high resolution image is
by splicing multiple images together. Just like a panoramic, or how
professional photographers photograph artwork.

Obviously had the sensor been more modern the image would have had better
dynamic range and less noise. However, as with the resolution issue, these
problems are mitigated by the fact that what Curiosity is point it's lens at
isn't moving, because resolution, noise and dynamic range can all be addressed
by taking multiple images and joining them all together.

I hope this helps explain so we don't have to go through this again.

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veloper
This is the first picture of Mars that made me say "wow" -- literally out
loud. The image is truly awesome, not only from visual aspect, but also
because of the amazing technological achievement(s) it took to obtain it.

The clarity of the terrain, and the mountains/hills in the background, makes
Mars feel much more tangible to me; It almost feels like I was there to take
the shot myself.

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leberwurstsaft
While stitching together the original images to a higher resolution panorama
(<https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B2Y0xU4gYdrLd1BFNXJiT1JacUE> \- 50MB, 31K
pixels wide, do not open the image in the browser, but download it, you've
been warned.) I noticed a very clear difference in brightness between the left
and the right end of it (the ends meet in the middle of the image, since I was
recreating the angle that NASA chose).

<https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B2Y0xU4gYdrLUU5iMEMzSUdYUzg>

Looks to me like changes in weather during the time the pictures where taken.

~~~
mertd
Maybe one side was facing the sun slightly?

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swombat
This looks so earth-like... I wonder if we could find a hardy bacteria (or a
set of bacteria) to inject life on Mars and kick-start the process of creating
an ecosystem there. It might take hundreds of years to get a tangible result,
but it'd be a start...

Then, we just need to find the Aliens' Turbinium reactor and start it up, and
bingo - blue skies on Mars.

~~~
marvin
I wonder what happened to all the water on Mars. Unless there were lakes of
liquid CO2 or methane in the past, pictures and measurements of Mars' geology
strongly indicate that there was a huge ocean and lots of river systems and/or
glaciers in the past. The most likely-seeming explanation is that it
sublimated to gas and was gradually kicked out of the atmosphere by the solar
wind, but there are plenty of experiments we could do to figure out if this
was really the case.

If Mars still retains most of its water in frozen form (perhaps trapped under
a layer of rock in the northern hemisphere), there is a possibility that the
planet could at some point be terraformed. Or at least that it would be much
easier than expected to set up a self-sufficient settlement there. There is
just so much about the planet we don't know. Sending a lot more probes would
be a great way to start exploring further and figure out the answers.

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leberwurstsaft
Not to belittle the achievement, but what's up with the HUGE white stripes
above and below the panoramic image? Makes browsing the image a bigger hassle
than necessary and adds quite some MB in size. 11.5 MB for the full resolution
image vs. 8.2 MB without the stripes (in PS saving at best JPEG quality) or
4.8 MB (at second best quality setting).

~~~
leberwurstsaft
Also: <http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/> doesn't load thumbnails
but the full sized images… (is this 1994?)

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mostly_harmless
with very little atmosphere on mars (<1 kpa), what is causing the 'fogginess'
in this picture?

(amazing picture btw)

~~~
ceejayoz
Dust in the air, most likely. There was a dust storm in the vicinity prior to
landing. [http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0803-mars-
curiosity-...](http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0803-mars-
curiosity-20120803,0,1349831.story)

~~~
mostly_harmless
and with so little atmosphere, what would cause these dust storms? Would the
wind at 1 kpa be able to do it alone?

~~~
m3koval
Just a guess: The weaker gravity (around 1/3 of Earth's gravity) makes it much
easier for wind to pick dust off the ground. Once a dust storm starts, it
would also take a lot longer for the cloud of dust to dissipate.

Look at the videos of astronauts on the moon from the Apollo landings.
Everything they do kicks up a significant amount of dust that takes quite a
while to dissipate. Obviously it's not a perfect comparison because the moon
has weaker gravity and a different composition.

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tectonic
Something about seeing another planet in high definition makes it feel so very
close. One day, people will sit on those rocks and ponder that horizon in
person.

~~~
jimktrains2
I always imagine putting my martian grandkids on my knee and pointing to the
martian heavens says "That dim dot is where i was born."

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dakrisht
Top center/right area of this image definitely looks like a place where
water/rivers/streams once ran. But I'm no geologist and these images could be
deceiving.

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Achshar
Water streams or lava streams. But mars has been volcanicaly inactive for a
long time now, and i am not sure which happened last, water flow or lava flow.

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option_greek
Whats with all the dark patches in most of the photos released.. are those the
secret alien bases NASA doesn't want us to see ? :)

~~~
js2
"The black areas indicate images not yet returned by the rover."

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ChrisNorstrom
Mars is really disappointing when compared to the Mars we've seen in movies.
Thanks to Hollywood my perception of Mars is permanently inaccurate and
exaggerated. I thought it would be a lot more... red... and out-of-this-world
like.

Honestly, it looks like Namibia, Africa
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SAC_Namibia-
escarpment2.jp...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SAC_Namibia-
escarpment2.jpg). It looks so realistic and dare I say it, "down to earth". On
one hand it feels touchable and visitable and on the other hand, boring and
visually uninspiring.

~~~
T-hawk
Most of the Solar System tends to be dull in color; most publicity photos from
NASA are significantly enhanced in the color department. The red of Mars or
blue of Neptune are real, but a lot more like #AA8888 than #FF0000. Water ice
and silicon-based rock are both predominantly gray, so you need a considerable
presence of some other elements to deviate significantly from that. Even
Jupiter's atmospheric bands and Great Red Spot are mostly dull browns, and
pretty much everything else with an atmosphere is considerably grayer and
blander than most photos lead you to think. Here's a few examples of the Solar
System in real color:

[http://whillyard.com/science-pages/our-solar-
system/upload-i...](http://whillyard.com/science-pages/our-solar-
system/upload-images/venus-real-color.jpg)

[http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Jupit...](http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Jupiter)

[http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/HIIPS/EPO/ganymede_g1_true.jp...](http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/HIIPS/EPO/ganymede_g1_true.jpg)

~~~
gwillen
Does anybody else get a severe visual illusion of motion when looking at the
Venus image?

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gosub
There are some rocks on the photo with quite sharp edges. I imagined that,
with winds so strong, they could be more levigated.

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andrewfelix
I always secretly hope to spot a weird footprint or some other missed evidence
of something mind blowing.

