| Mars Pathfinder "Filled Donut" Mosaic
This image is a product of 3 data sets:
- a color mosaic image of the "Gallery Panorama",
- an image which indicates the distance to the nearest object at
each pixel location, referred to as a range image, and
- a digital image of a full-scale museum model of the MPF Lander.
The Gallery Pan image and the range image were projected onto a
continuous cylindrical/perspective coordinate system spanning 360
degrees of azimuth. The range image was then treated as a
displacement map with respect to a sphere's surface, and the color
image mosaic was draped onto the inside of the sphere so that lines
of constant azimuth radiate from the center and lines of constant
elevation are concentric circles. The position of the camera is fixed at
the sphere's center, while its viewing direction is in this case looking
at the south pole of the sphere. This projection preserves the resolution
of the original panorama.
The distortion visible near the edges of this image is due to the
large field of view, as well as the limitation introduced by using
cylindrically-projected images on the sphere - the effects of which are
less apparent when smaller fields of view are used.
The center of the image consists of the museum model image,
which has been geometrically warped to spatially register with the
projected Gallery Pan data. The position of the camera was fixed
above the model so that the IMP Mast was roughly at Nadir.
The image has been rotated so that the main points of interest,
which are the "Rock Garden", the rover Sojourner and the rock
"Yogi", are visible arching across the upper hemisphere. In fixed Mars
Surface coordinates, the top of the image looks out towards a point a
few degrees north of West. Color has been enhanced to improve
contrast in features, and is derived from IMP spectral filters 5, 9 and 0.
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