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First High-Res Color Photos from Mars

Posted by michael on from the martians-blend-in-with-the-terrain dept.

mzs writes "The first color thumbnail from Spirit was available yesterday from a larger image. Today some full-size color images are available. If you are in the USA you may be interested in catching the NOVA program on your local PBS station tonight." Acrobatman notes the existence of a nifty utility:"Mars24, a Mac OS X and Java application and applet which displays a Mars 'sunclock', a graphical representation of Mars. This free utility shows the current sun- and nightsides of Mars, along with a numerical readout of the time in 24-hour format and landmarks such as the landing positions of the rovers."

4 of 540 comments (clear)

  1. I wouldn't mind going there myself. by ActionPlant · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Very cool! I'm not sure I even care how they compare to previous pictures. There's something about knowing these are from virgin ground (so to speak). Alien landscape. I can't get enough. Right now, it just doesn't get much better.

    Damon,

    --
    http://actionPlant.com
  2. Hmmmm.... Patterns.... by greg_barton · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Check out this pic There's a line of rocks that starts at the middle left edge of the picture and goes up and to the right. In addition, there's a line of rocks that intersects the first in the upper/center. Finally, there's a "wind trail" in the sand that intersects both rock lines, forming a triangle.

    In the center of the triangle are two triangular rocks.

    Isn't that interesting?

  3. Dark Patches near the Rover? by Odonian · · Score: 5, Interesting

    One interesting mystery is the presence of dark patches that look like mud near the rover - they are clearly visible at the bottom the larger 8MB version of the photo on the nasa site. They are most likely formed by the airbags, but have an unusual dark appearance that really looks like wet ground.. nobody seems to know why they'd look that way from what I've read so far.

  4. The photo with colors and gradations revealed... by xilvar · · Score: 5, Interesting

    For fun I carefully massaged the photo to suppress the massive red cast, so we can see all the colors and detail more clearly : here!
    And the original for comparison (just resized) : here!