Slashdot Mirror
How Spirit Takes Pictures
Some Clown writes "MSNBC has a great article on the details of the camera system on the Mars Rover titled How Sprit makes great photos. Apparently the high resolution images are all done with a 1-megapixel camera. All the money is in the CCD and Lens. The hardcore digital photographers in the crowd will probably find the article to be only a teaser on the technical specs, but the rest of us in the unwashed masses should find it interesting."
The hardcore digital photographers in the crowd will probably find the article to be only a teaser on the technical specs, but the rest of us in the unwashed masses should find it interesting.
What does having a six-digit Slashdot UID have to do with digital photography knowledge?
You probably shouldn't click this.
Somehow I don't see the phrase "shake it like a 1-megapixel digital camera" being as catchy
I dunno, That would suck if all Spirit's pictures had a finger in the bottom corner of them like all mine do.
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Humans to the moon (1969)
Digital cameras to mars (2004)
Internet Fridges to pluto (2010)?
Is this progress?
So, digital camera's and Tang are the practical spin-offs from the space program. cool.
Actually, it's only 1 megapixel because it's a cameraphone. Sprint donated the phone in exchange for showing off their new Martian-wide network. The lander just waits until 7pm so it can send home pictures using free nights and weekends. Unfortunately the budget killer is the shots from the rover since they incur roaming charges.
Yeah, that's great for taking pictures of things that aren't moving, but if some fast-moving martian zips past Spirit, all we're going to see is a low-res blur!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
"Perhaps I'll dust my old 1MP camera off and see if I can do anything similar."
You're going to send your old Sony Mavica to Mars?!?!?!?!?!
Are those really fake rocks? Interesting how they look so much like the real thing. Martian cilization must have been great indeed for them to be capable of such painstakingly accurate forgeries of pebbles...
$400 million? Does that include the cost of getting it there?
No, it doesn't. NASA engineers saved up some frequent flyer miles accrued on the space shuttle and the space station, and got a free trip to mars. Next, they'll be saving up for a round-trip and I've heard that they are soliciting milage donations from the public.
Put another way, $400 million is about a dollar for each american. Have you gotten your dollar's worth of entertainment yet? (Or $2.30 if the price is $810 mil)
To compare, bush's little iraq war is going to cost 100-200 Billion dollars and over 500 coallition lives so far. Do you expect to get your $1400 worth of oil/entertainment from that?
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
If you follow that link and see the forbidden image of a Zero-Point Energy module left behind when the Grays dumped Elvis' worn-out second body on Mars back in 1972, you're just asking to disappear one of these days.