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First full-resolution images of the Martian surface

nasa.gov

21–30 of 150 posts

Re: First full-resolution images of the Martian surface

#21

This was taken by the camera whose sole purpose is to assist with navigation. That is why its B&W, low quality, and stitched. The main camera system will produce full color images that I assume will be much higher quality.

Are there any examples of a picture taken on Earth with the main camera?

Re: First full-resolution images of the Martian surface

#22
post #15

How far away are those hills in the back? I'm guessing they're farther away than we might think, due to Mars not having much of an atmosphere to reduce visibility.

I think you think its a lot farther than it actually is.

My estimate would be about a mile.

Re: First full-resolution images of the Martian surface

#25
post #22
post #15

How far away are those hills in the back? I'm guessing they're farther away than we might think, due to Mars not having much of an atmosphere to reduce visibility.

I think you think its a lot farther than it actually is. My estimate would be about a mile.

From a topographic picture of Gale crater [1] with the landing area of Curiosity circled, its about 25km to the nearest crater wall or slightly more than 15 miles to the crater wall.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Topograp...

Re: First full-resolution images of the Martian surface

#26
post #20
post #16

Has something been whited-out in the bottom right corner?

I might well be wrong, but I assumed that white spot was just the sun reflecting off of that part of the rover.

I had to actually stop and think "hang on, does 'sun' mean THE sun, or....".

It's cool thinking about a little robot on mars cruising around doing stuff for us, still showing reflections from THE sun.

Re: First full-resolution images of the Martian surface

#27

Looks like the image was stitched together from multiple images, judging by the jagged edges at the top and the "fold" to the right of middle in the image. Very neat, nonetheless.

I think that's why it's described as "two" high resolution images and they're only providing a single file to view.

Re: First full-resolution images of the Martian surface

#28
post #24

Looks pretty boring around there. I hope they can find something interesting somewhere around that area. I read that over the whole mission the rover is supposed to drive only ~20 miles, so there better be something interesting to observe :)

There is an IMMENSE amount of stuff to observe and learn about this boring part of Mars. Geology, water formations, rock formations, sand composition, atmosphere, etc.

Imagine if you lived on another planet and sent a probe that landed in the middle of the desert in Africa. You wouldn't exclaim "that looks boring!", you'd say "awesome, so much data to crunch!"

Re: First full-resolution images of the Martian surface

#30
post #9

i hate to be critical of an image sent from millions of miles away but I have an honest question: Why do images from landers like this always look like there were taken from a iPhone 1's camera?

Have you seen it at full res or not ? http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/674898main_pia16013-full_... (To me, it does not look like iPhone anymore.)

yeah, it looks worse
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