First Stereograms of Mars from Spirit

An anonymous reader writes "NASA has made the first stereo image pairs from Spirit available. I've made stereo anaglyphs and arranged the full-size images side-by-side for stereo viewing. These are from the low-res black and white hazard avoidance camera, but still very cool. Anxiously awaiting the first stereo pairs from the panoramic cameras!"

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Other 3-D sets

[imac_mafia]

Hmm. I submitted my own 3-D composites, but mine were rejected and these accepted. But if you'd like to see more of Mars in 3-D, my own stereoscopic pairs are posted here on Re:zine [rezine.org] (Sunday, Jan. 4th, 'Mars In 3-D!'). The last of the four is artificially colorized using color samples from previous Mars expedition photos. Enjoy!

Almost every picture from Spirit is a pair

[Thagg]

I had found a page of the raw images from Spirit earlier today, and every picture from the rover was one of a pair -- it makes sense, because all the cameras are stereo cameras. It was really quite interesting to see the images in 3D as it showed that the ground has gently rolling hills (dune-like) and is not nearly as uniformly flat as it appears in the monocular images.

Note that the cameras are about a foot apart in most cases, about 5 times the spacing between your eyes, so the 3D is exaggerated by the same amount (alternatively, you can think that it makes the world look 5 times as small.) It's amazing what the third dimension gives you.

Sadly, the amount of JPEG compression on these early images adds a huge amount of noise, that isn't apparent in the single images but makes the stereo pair look very noisy indeed. One would hope that once the high-gain antenna is configured, they can start sending far less compressed images.

The other sad thing is that I lost the URL of the raw images page :(

thad

What's most interesting to me is ...

[FlunkedFlank]

... that you can see the extent to which the airbags are still inflated, and get a sense of which egress route is better than others. At least one of those airbags is still quite puffed up.

I prefer the parallel images to the cross-eyed ones. Crossing your eyes just hurts, but relaxing them and focusing them offscreen doesn't at all, you can do it forever practically if you can get a lock on the right amount to relax.

Ignorance is bliss, I suppose

[Anonymous Coward]

Just consider the distance to Mars and the time it takes to get there. Then consider the fact that you'd have to come back.

Even if there are people suicidal enough to volunteer for a one way trip, such a mission would never be approved because it's unethical. And from a purely objective standpoint, a suicidal team wouldn't have the emotional stability required on task of this magnitude. I certainly don't want to pack a bunch of lunatics/naive adventurers on a mission to Mars.

Saying that sending a human mission to Mars is simple doesn't make you a visionary, but actually very shortsighted.

Re:Extremely cool

[FlunkedFlank]

Yeah, I always thought that too! The interesting thing about this set of images and that once you can see the parallel images in 3D you can look over a bit and see the cross-eyed images as well, and they're inverted 3D. (furthest point closest.) Seeing that made me realize the difference between the two techniques: the ordering of the images. In the parallel technique I think the proper image is going to each eye (right to right, left to left), but in the cross-eyed approach it's reversed. (I think, anyway, and I might have that backwards.)

Re:Extremely cool

[YU Nicks NE Way]

Most people preferentially free fuse cross-eyed: the right eye focuses on the left-hand image and vice versa. Some people, however, can free fuse in parallel: the right eye focuses on the right-hand image, the left eye on the left-hand image. Colleagues of mine who could do both told me that parallel fusion gave them less of a headache than cross fusion.

One way is easy.

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

A one way trip I am sure would be do-able. Leaving out the "get back home" part makes things MUCH more simple. However, even if the line of volunteers was a mile long, todays policitally correct enviornment and would not let the brave souls make the trip. I think NASA should throw the idea of a "one-way mission to Mars(TM) in three years" into the news and see what happens.

Re:Extremely cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people also don't have the ability to use them as they have no stereo depth perception. We used to test for spatial ability for using stereoscopes, as it was essential for doing certain tasks with aerial photography. It wasn't uncommon for people to get no concept of depth at all even when they were seeing two disparate images perfectly aligned, that others would see in 3D. These people without fail could not see Magic Eye illusions either.

Some other people who COULD use the stereoscope couldn't see magic eye images either, but that's just a case of not being able to manually align the images, where it was automatic with the stereoscope.

Bounce Impacts?

[ambit]

Shouldn't we be able to see some kind of impacts from the craft bouncing along the surface? Or would wind have destroyed them already?

Let's Go to Mars!!!

[uptownguy]

You do realize, don't you, that people sailed around the world in the 16th Century. On a regular basis. Not all of them made it. Many died. On each voyage. We didn't know how to desalinate water then. We didn't have radio then. Hell, we didn't know about sanitation then. Doctors didn't wash their hands for another 300 years still. Even a simple thing like vitamin C to prevent scurvy was centuries off...

But still people did it. They explored. Because they know the long term payoff was there. And that there were willing souls ready to go now... and that the rewards and the victory go to the strong and the brave. The timid sit back and let others collect.

...or do you think the Chinese are faking it when they say they are going to the moon by 2020? Do you think they aren't planning to go to Mars and mine the astroids? This is China, where millions have been displaced in the last few years -- entire cities moved -- for a DAM that is being built ... today! You don't think they plan ahead? Shouldn't we?

Rome faltered when it got soft. It became brittle. The people were interested in bloody spectacles... infighting and political intrigue took over in the Senate. Then Barbarians with a different religion attacked -- Of course Rome could always defeat them -- but again and again they attacked until finally the capital fell.

Just a random historical bit of trivia to throw at the end of my rant... It wasn't supposed mean anything...or maybe it was. Look, all I know is that someone from our generation needs to start inspiring people. Let's go to Mars and stop worrying so much, OK? Humanity NEEDS this and people are tougher than you think.

Knowing how and being physically able not the same

[DunbarTheInept]

Most people already KNOW how to read those pictures by looking 'at infinity' making their eyes see in parallel directions. It's a simple concept. The problem is that it's not actually phyisically possible for many people, myself included. The problem is that there often is NO way for them to put the aim of their eyeballs under conscious control. Those muscles can't be moved directly like a bicep can. For some of us, those muscles are involuntary. We just think "I want to look, *there*, and some low-level process we don't consciously percieve does the rest. Thus we lack the ability to decouple focus distance from directional aim of the eyes. (So, if we want to make our eyes look "in paralel", it automatically also triggers the muscles that alter the shape of the eye to focus at infinity. We can't seperate the two because it was never learned as a conscious voluntary act. For us, trying to focus close while not aiming the eyes at a close point (angling inward) is like trying to consciously tell our stomachs to stop digesting food. We don't know the control mechanism to do that, and we never needed to learn it until stereograms came out. The brain pathway to give us that control just isn't there.

It's like trying to wriggle my ear. I don't know what muscle to flex to make that happen.

Re:Almost every picture from Spirit is a pair

[anubi]

I would think that there would be some sort of special encoding algorithm for compressing stereo pairs that would minimize differential noise between the two images. Noise to baseline is one thing, but spatial noise between images will be perceived as gross excursions in distance.

On another note, there is nothing special about having a "stereo" camera... nothing out there is moving. Its nice having two cameras for redundancy, but otherwise, you still get perfectly good stereo images from one camera, if that camera is moving. Take a photo, take another when the camera has moved a foot. Presto - those two images constitute a stereo image. Thats a neat way to get 3-D landscape images from a satellite camera as the satellite orbits.

Re:Try taking your glasses/lenses off

[John Hasler]

I'm extremely nearsighted but I can't make the 'parallel' method work, glasses on or off. On the other hand, I can make all the "cross-eyed' pairs work, including the last ones that are supposed to be too big for that.