Billion-Pixel View of Mars Snapped By Curiosity 32
astroengine writes "If you were in any doubt as to Curiosity's photography prowess, this panorama of Gale Crater should allay your concerns. In this billion-pixel photo from Mars, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory snapped nearly 900 separate images that were then stitched together to create a wonderful high-definition view from the robot's mast-mounted cameras. '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., who assembled the scene. 'You can see the context and also zoom in to see very fine details.'"
Cool (Score:2)
Windows only? (Score:2)
It's no wonder that NASA is rotting away.
Re:Windows only? (Score:5, Informative)
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA16919.jpg
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Supercool! Now to figure out whose printer to send it to to print in poster mode. Daddy wants to wallpaper a room, but doesn't want to pay printing charges. BWAHAHAHA!
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Afaict the "cylindrical viewer" is silverlight based, the "panoramic viewer" is flash based.
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The plan is to ascend Mt. Sharp. I'm not sure how far up they're planning on going, but they want to study the geological layers in the mountain. It's going to take a while to get there, though.
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Re:Cool (Score:5, Funny)
Does anyone know if they are actually going to bring the rover up the mountain...?
Patience, grasshopper. With enough time, the mountain will come down to the rover.
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The Mountain called, said he was going over to Muhammad's place instead.
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It's quite a bit more than an 'entry level' DSLR. Bring an entry level DSLR to a high-radiation environment like outer space and see how well it keeps taking pictures.
Re:camera greatness?? I think not... (Score:5, Informative)
If it takes 900 images to make a 1 000 000 000 pixel image, that means it's a, wait for it, a 1.1 mega pixel camera!! While these numbers aren't exact they're in the ball park
Might as well go for the actual numbers, right? The original image is 1.3 billion pixels, not exactly 1 billion. The MastCam (2 cameras) can take true-color still pictures at 1600x1200, just below 2 million pixels. It can also take video at 10fps at 1280x720 (720p). There's another camera, the Mars Hand Lens Imager, which also takes 1600x1200 pictures but is meant for closeups, it has a focal length between 18 - 21 mm and can zoom up to 14.5 micrometers per pixel. The descent imager is also 1600x1200, but its job is done. There are 13 other cameras at lower resolution. The rover has far and away the best camera suite we've dropped on to Mars.
So please don't go thinking it's one picture taken by a camera that has a 1 giga pixel sensor on it.
Don't worry, anyone who got to the second sentence in the summary knows that.
Re:camera greatness?? I think not... (Score:5, Funny)
So please don't go thinking it's one picture taken by a camera that has a 1 giga pixel sensor on it.
Don't worry, anyone who got to the second sentence in the summary knows that.
So .... At least 30% of Slashdot?
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Not impressed by a 1-2 MP camera? Well: it was tested and developed for about 5 years before getting on the rover, which means it didn't get further in the chip development road.
Industry graded cameras are still in the VGA-5 MP range. Check out companies like ISVI, AVT, PointGrey, Basler. Only specialized companies offer sensors like 29MP full frame chips. The grunt work is done in low megapixels.
did anyone else notice (Score:2)
Meh (Score:2)
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Correct, but incomplete -- By 1976 (only 19 years after Sputnik 1) we had two nuclear powered, robot laboratories (Vikings 1 and 2) on Mars looking for life and signs of life and taking awesome pictures. So now it is 37 years later and we have Curiosity, a nuclear powered, robot laboratory looking for signs of life and taking awesome pictures, which can move around on Mars. The leap from Sputnik to Viking sure seems to be a lot more than that from Viking to Curiosity. Not to dismiss the awesomeness of Cu
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look up MTFs. film ain't so flash anymore.
besides, i wonder how the film would look after going through radiation belts for months?
The lizard (Score:2)
Does this photo have another angle on the Mars lizard [huffingtonpost.co.uk] ?
Rectangle (Score:1)
Can we take a moment to talk about that rectangle? And another moment to jaw drop in awe at more Mars photos? Just think about it, that's frakin' Mars!!
Fuck off NASA (Score:2)
You'll be installing Microsoft Silverlight
Your Jedi mind-tricks don't work on me.