First Stereograms of Mars from Spirit

An anonymous reader writes "NASA has made the first stereo image pairs from Spirit available. I've made stereo anaglyphs and arranged the full-size images side-by-side for stereo viewing. These are from the low-res black and white hazard avoidance camera, but still very cool. Anxiously awaiting the first stereo pairs from the panoramic cameras!"

Comments

Extremely cool

[ebob]

The parallel approach works for me and it's very cool. Much better than the ugly red/blue tint that you get with the anaglyphs. The cross-eyed approach just makes my eyes hurt.

You just have to let your eyes relax and just sort of nudge the two images into convergence.

The only problem is convincing your friends and family that it works and trying to instruct them how to do it.

Re:Extremely cool

[helix400]

If you put your finger 3 inches from your eyes, and stare at it, your eyes will look and feel crossed. That's how it will sorta feel if you do the cross-eyed method. If you stare far away, say, at a distant landmark, your eyes do the opposite of crossing, they spread out. This is sorta how parallel feels.

For more detail, the parallel is where your left eye looks at the left image, and your right eye looks at the right image (which is why they call it parallel, if you were to draw lines from your eyes to the picture they're looking at, you'd have to parallel lines).

The cross-eyed is the opposite. If you were to draw lines from eyes to picture, you'd see them cross.

In my opinion, cross-eyed method is easiest. If you can cross you eyes on two images, and you have enough eye control to force one "phantom" image to lay on top of another "phantom" image (from your other eye), bingo, it'll automatically work. It also has the nice bonus of being able to "touch" what you see. It also lets you cross-eye stuff many many inches apart, while parallel only lets you do maybe 3 inches max.

Stereo images

[grub]

If you have an nvidia card with the latest 3D stereo drivers you can run 3D LCD shutter glasses (assuming your monitor can run ~120 hz or better) and view JPS images in "real" 3D. All JPS images are are 2 JPGs side by side which the viewer splits in half and displays one half at a time per screen refresh.

I've made a few of my own JPS images simply by taking two pictures with my digital camera a few centimeters offset and combining the two resulting JPGs into one JPS file.

Quicktime VR Composite

[ashkar]

Quicktime VR available on SpaceRef here.

Re:so where's the color photos from JPL?

[imac_mafia]

The Pathfinder/Sojourner mission only had enough energy (they thought) for 7 days of activity on mars, so they planned a tight, fast mission and hurried everything very quickly to make use of the very limited energy. Sojourner landed on Mars on July 4, 1997, and these images were returned to Earth that same day. Of course, the energy supply turned out to last well longer than the planned mission, so the mission was extended. (The last data successfully retrieved from Sojourner was on Sept. 26, 1997.)

Spirit is an entirely different story. The images we've seen so far are just from positioning/navigation cameras which only image in b&w. But I believe the first color images from the high-res, color cameras are due to reach us any time now. We should have high-res color pics sometime today.

Spirit has far better batteries, lots more energy, and a much longer mission schedule. Where Sojourner was expected to run for just 7 days, Spirit and Opportunity are expected to run for 90 days. The mission schedules this time are more deliberate and meticulous.

Today Spirit is going to begin to put down it's wheels and "stand up." But that whole process with take two days. And it won't actually roll off the pad and onto Martian soil until the 9th or 10th day after the landing.

So just have patience. We should see the first color pictures today, and Spirit will start puttering around the surface by the middle of next week.

Failure to provide instant gratification isn't a sign of general failure, nor an indicator of conspiracy. ;)

* Here's the Mars Pathfinder mission web site

* And here's an overview of the current Spirit & Opportunity missions.