13-Dec-2004
|
|
|
|
 |
'Burns Cliff' Color Panorama
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity captured this view of "Burns Cliff" after driving right to the base of this southeastern portion of the inner wall of "Endurance Crater." The view combines frames taken by Opportunity's panoramic camera between the rover's 287th and 294th martian days (Nov. 13 to 20, 2004).
This is a composite of 46 different images, each acquired in seven different Pancam filters. It is an approximately true-color rendering generated from the panoramic camera's 750-nanometer, 530-nanometer and 430-nanometer filters. The mosaic spans more than 180 degrees side to side. Because of this wide-angle view, the cliff walls appear to bulge out toward the camera. In reality the walls form a gently curving, continuous surface.
Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell
|
|
Browse Image |
Medium Image (881 kB) |
Large (38.5 MB)
|
|
|
|
 |
Clouds over 'Endurance' on Sol 290
Clouds add drama to the sky above "Endurance Crater" in this mosaic of frames taken by the navigation camera on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity at about 9:30 a.m. on the rover's 290th sol (Nov. 16, 2004). The view spans an arc from east on the left to the southwest on the right.
These clouds are part of a band that forms near the equator when Mars is near the part of its orbit that is farthest from the Sun. For Opportunity (and Spirit and the rest of the southern hemisphere), this occurs in late fall and early winter. During this period, atmospheric temperatures and the amount of water vapor combine to form large-scale clouds. These clouds look like Earth's cirrus clouds and share other similarities with cirrus clouds in that they are believed to be composed entirely of water-ice particles with sizes on the order of several micrometers (a few ten-thousandths of an inch).
The images that are combined to produce this view have been processed to remove geometrical distortion associated with the camera's 45-degree field of view. In addition, special image processing has been applied to enhance the clouds and make them visible across the entire mosaic. The rim of Endurance was processed using the same technique, illustrating how much enhancement was done. Glare from the Sun washed out the clouds on the left in the original images; this glare was removed.
Image credit: NASA/JPL
|
|
Browse Image (56.7 kB) |
Large (480 kB)
|
|
|
|
 |
Clouds over 'Endurance' on Sol 291
Clouds appear in the martian sky above "Endurance Crater" in this mosaic of frames taken by the navigation camera on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity during the morning of the rover's 291st sol (Nov. 17, 2004). The view spans an arc from the east on the left to the southwest on the right.
Opportunity has observed differences in cloudiness from one sol to the next, a reminder that Mars, like Earth, has daily weather as well as longer-term seasonal changes.
The images that are combined to produce this view have been processed to remove geometrical distortion associated with the camera's 45-degree field of view. In addition, special image processing has been applied to the original images to enhance the clouds and make them visible across the entire mosaic. Glare from the Sun washed out the clouds on the left in the original images; this glare was removed. The left-most image in this mosaic contains some artifacts from pointing the camera toward the Sun. The rim of Endurance has been processed separately and merged back with the sky to better show the context.
Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell
|
|
Browse Image (53.7 kB) |
Large (530 kB)
|
|
