[meteorite-list] Billion-Pixel View of Mars Comes From Curiosity Rover

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 11:39:35 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201306191839.r5JIdZ6L014108_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-205

Billion-Pixel View of Mars Comes From Curiosity Rover
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
June 19, 2013

PASADENA, Calif. -- A billion-pixel view from the surface of Mars, from
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, offers armchair explorers a way to examine
one part of the Red Planet in great detail.

The first NASA-produced view from the surface of Mars larger than one
billion pixels stitches together nearly 900 exposures taken by cameras
onboard Curiosity and shows details of the landscape along the rover's
route.

The 1.3-billion-pixel image is available for perusal with pan and zoom
tools at: http://mars.nasa.gov/bp1/ .

The full-circle scene surrounds the site where Curiosity collected its
first scoops of dusty sand at a windblown patch called "Rocknest," and
extends to Mount Sharp on the horizon.

"It gives a sense of place and really shows off the cameras'
capabilities," said Bob Deen of the Multi-Mission Image Processing
Laboratory at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "You
can see the context and also zoom in to see very fine details."

Deen assembled the product using 850 frames from the telephoto camera of
Curiosity's Mast Camera instrument, supplemented with 21 frames from the
Mastcam's wider-angle camera and 25 black-and-white frames -- mostly of
the rover itself -- from the Navigation Camera. The images were taken on
several different Mars days between Oct. 5 and Nov. 16, 2012. Raw
single-frame images received from Curiosity are promptly posted on a
public website at: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/ . Mars
fans worldwide have used those images to assemble mosaic views,
including at least one gigapixel scene.

The new mosaic from NASA shows illumination effects from variations in
the time of day for pieces of the mosaic. It also shows variations in
the clarity of the atmosphere due to variable dustiness during the month
while the images were acquired.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory project is using Curiosity and the
rover's 10 science instruments to investigate the environmental history
within Gale Crater, a location where the project has found that
conditions were long ago favorable for microbial life.

Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, built and operates Curiosity's
Mastcam. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena, manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in
Washington and built the Navigation Camera and the rover.

More information about the mission is online at: http://www.nasa.gov/msl
and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ .

You can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at:
http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and
http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .

For more information about the Multi-Mission Image Processing
Laboratory, see: http://www-mipl.jpl.nasa.gov/mipex.html .

Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster at jpl.nasa.gov

2013-205
Received on Wed 19 Jun 2013 02:39:35 PM PDT