Posted on 10/12/2004 10:27:04 AM PDT by cogitator
Click article link for article, and link to big image (0.5 MB).
Text:
This stunning image mosaic of the "Columbia Hills" is the first 360-degree panorama taken since the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit arrived at the hills over a month ago. The rover has been busy studying the rocks here, which show evidence of past alteration by water. The dark patch of soil to the right is the spot where Spirit stopped for engineering work on its right front wheel. Spirit's tracks can be followed from there all the way back to "Bonneville Crater" and the original landing site, more than 3 kilometers (1.86 miles) away.
This approximate true-color image, nicknamed the "Cahokia panorama" after the Native American archaeological site near St. Louis, was acquired between sols 213 to 223 (Aug. 9 to 19, 2004). The panorama consists of 470 images acquired through six panoramic camera filters (750 to 480 nanometers). It took until the week of sol 237 (Sept. 2) to downlink all the data back to Earth. Several more weeks of image processing and geometric mapping by team members at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., to stitch all the images together into this spectacular mosaic.
LOL Sir Elton
Wow!! I've heard about these hills in all the Martian travel magazines, but this is the first time I have ever seen any pictures.
Now I know what the Martians are talking about. There AREN'T any bugs and snakes there!!
(Also, no trees, water, fishing or hunting but, hey, what's 1 out of 6?)
I suppose it's silly to point out that they're emissions-free vehicles. (Solar-powered.) But we did leave a lot of trash lying around from the landing (heat shields, parachutes, etc.).
I was wonderin' where he was...
If you go to the link, enlarge the photo and then look closely further up on the photo, about midway up, and then look a third of the frame to the right of the Explorer, there is a patch of dirt with a large circular impression as well as some straight line and rectangular impressions.
Hopefully those impressions are tracks showing where the Explorer was.
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