Curiosity takes high resolution panorama of the canyon it will soon enter
Click for original image.
Using its high resolution camera, the Curiosity science team has now released a November 2022 panorama looking south into Gediz Vallis, the Martian slot canyon that the rover will be entering in the near future.
The panorama above, cropped and reduced to post here, shows that canyon. The red dotted line indicates Curiosity’s approximate path since the panorama was taken, circling around behind Chenapua.
The mosaic is made up of 18 individual images that were stitched together after being sent to Earth. The color has been adjusted to match lighting conditions as the human eye would see them on Earth.
Not only should you definitely look at the original, at full resolution, but also compare it with the black and white mosaic I posted in December 2022, taken by the rover’s navigation camera looking in the same direction though from a slightly different position. The color definitely underlines the spectacular nature of the landscape.
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Click for original image.
Using its high resolution camera, the Curiosity science team has now released a November 2022 panorama looking south into Gediz Vallis, the Martian slot canyon that the rover will be entering in the near future.
The panorama above, cropped and reduced to post here, shows that canyon. The red dotted line indicates Curiosity’s approximate path since the panorama was taken, circling around behind Chenapua.
The mosaic is made up of 18 individual images that were stitched together after being sent to Earth. The color has been adjusted to match lighting conditions as the human eye would see them on Earth.
Not only should you definitely look at the original, at full resolution, but also compare it with the black and white mosaic I posted in December 2022, taken by the rover’s navigation camera looking in the same direction though from a slightly different position. The color definitely underlines the spectacular nature of the landscape.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
The detail is amazing. The lack of atmospheric density allows distant objects to be seen so clearly. Any idea of the distance to where the projected track markers end? A few hundred meters or a mile?
Looks like the desert in western China just before the Pakistan border.
Jerry Greenwood: Go to my December 2022 panorama, link in this post. I have an overview map there with scale, and yellow lines that indicate the area covered by the panorama pretty closely.
looks like across the street, in Arizona
To all: I must emphasize that in Arizona or western China there will always be some life. There is almost no spot on Earth that has not been shaped by biology in some way.
In this picture there has been and there is no life. While it remains unknown whether life once existed on Mars, if it did it was a very long time ago (likely billions of years), and it was never there in the quantity we see on Earth. Thus, its impact on the geology was minimal, at best.
Curiosity is giving us the first close-up detailed look at the landscape of an alien and lifeless planet.
Pray that it is lifeless, so that there are fewer crazies to shout that we can’t use and populate Mars.
If you look in the far distance near the center of the picture, zoom in, you’ll see the face of desperation.
a pleading expression in dead lifeless stone… a face on Mars looking to the heavens to give it life…
Someone should copy and post that unusual iconic ”face of Mars” as a meme of a golem expressing emotion and hopelessness.
I think it is haunting in appearance.