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Detailed Panorama of Mars Released
dptalia writes "NASA has just released a detailed panorama of Mars taken by the Spirit rover. During the short Martian winter the rover didn't get enough sunlight to move, so it took these pictures instead. Spirit took over 1400 pictures, for a total of 500 megs of data. If you look to the left of the picture, you'll see the tracks from the rover's trip."
TFA has some tiny images that barely pass as thumbnails. You can get the actual 'detailed panoramas' from NASA directly.
That must have taken a while to render in 3DSMax.
OMG! Some NASA bogan has been doing "circle work" with the rover!
From "The Onion": Mars Rover Beginning To Hate Mars. "And the thousand or so daily messages of 'STILL NO WATER' really point to a crisis of purpose."
How sad! We should send some humans there to play with it.
Revive the Constitution.
If you look to the left of the picture, you'll see the tracks from the rover's trip.
You look at them as "tracks from the rover's trip."
The martian people look at them as "evidence leading to the invading probe from earth."
Push Button, Receive Bacon
For the curious, the links to Spirit's and Opportunity's "raw pictures" are here http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/all/ ---Alex
That's the sound of thousands of nerds changing their wallpaper...
Also, this isn't the final image; just a preview in honor of Spirit's 1000th sol. Another panorama picture will be released that includes the rover deck.
/. is irrelevant.
...you can see the small green alien with antennas picking his nose staring at the camera.
Where is K'breel, speaker for the Council? What shall we do, elder?
Global warming is a cube.
Well, they already have their map ready
$30 Off All Plans: Use code TRIPLESAWBUCK
The McMurdo pan has been compiled over the last six months or so. The raw data is always up on the web almost as soon as it arrives on earth (thanks to the enlightened attitude of Steve Squyres, PI :) and lots of people grab these and make their own images. There's even a dedicated software app: google for "Midnight Mars Browser". There are a couple of forums dedicated to this stuff which I shall refrain from linking to (Google around, if you're interested enough you'll soon find 'em) that produce really superb (so-called) "amateur" work, often before the official JPL releases.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
If you look to the left of the picture, you'll see the tracks from the rover's trip
Those look like transformer tracks to me.
I just pooped your party.
if you don't know what to do with your 20%, time to start google maps Mars.
It's all faked anyways. They aren't on Mars. It's all STAGED people...... ...that's the moon, colourized.
Never play chicken with a passive aggressive.
I'm looking forward to Google Mars. Should be a nice companion to Google Earth.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
I'm surprised nobody yet seems to have cropped down to that heavily tracked part of the image and made it more widely available. Guess it comes with the problems of working with even an 11.7Mb JPEG in an image editor unless you have a machine up to the task, which I won't till well into 2007.
Reminds me about our local TV news showing the recent orbiter pic of Victoria Crater and zooming in until a black dot appeared near the rim, while totally omitting to mention that the black dot was a rover (Opportunity).
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
Or does this look like what you've always imagined tatooine really looked like?
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
Look, Banth tracks on the far right!!!!
* Carthago Delenda Est *
News of the purchase came as positive news to Wall Street, while reaction across the tech industry was more varied. Steve Ballmer was quoted saying "I'm going to f*cking kill Mars", and attempted to destroy the planet by throwing a chair at it.
500 megs
Did he actually say "megs"?
/me cries
Have you read my journal today?
According to http://www.google.com/mars/ the McMurdo Crater has these coordinates: 84.4S, 0.9E
But the Spirit rover landed in 14.57S, 175.47E which is quite a distance in between... do I mix stuff up, is there an error on the google page or did that RC car really go all that way down there?
.sigh
I took the NASA image and converted it for interactive viewing (with a choice of five viewers, including Quicktime, Shockwave and Java).
Interactive McMurdo Panorama, Winter on Mars
During the short Martian winter the rover didn't get enough sunlight to move, so it took these pictures instead.
"Using power. Using power. Using power."
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
It's called the "McMurdo panorama", for what reason I can't find out, but the images are of the "winter haven" region in Gusev crater. The rovers have driven only a few miles each since landing nearly 3 years ago (but that's an incredible achievement compared to anything that's gone before in planetary landings).
-- Old Man Kensey
Does anyone have the tools and ability to create a QTVR panorama from these pictures? I suppose I should also ask if it has already been done.
Yup. If you're in Albuquerque's west side (near the Rio Grande) and looking west, this panorama looks a fair bit like the volcanoes atop the west mesa. cool. it was such a different place than Wisconsin that to this midwestern boy, living there was almost like being on Mars.
::insert family drama of years ago:: ;-)
that said, i visit and climb the volcanoes as often as i can, which is not nearly enough.
-- haaz.