681 megapixels of Mars, which almost no one saw

Not so long ago, NASA published a 1,300-megapixel panorama of Mars, which Curiosity took about 8 months ago, when it was in the Rocknest site (rock nest). Having left it, the rover advanced approximately 20 meters and stopped for another two weeks, and again took up photography. NASA did not come up with this site name, so this panorama is nameless. At the new site, Curiosity made a circle survey, but this time it did not complete 360 ​​degrees, so the panorama turned out with small gaps and NASA did not publish it. I collected it from 392 photographs and present it for review.



View the panorama in full size on GigaPan .
View and download a reduced version of vk.com

Black cut-out in the center of the picture - the rover itself. The panorama he shot on the 100 mm right mast camera MastCam Right. Because of the long focal length, it cannot focus on close objects, so they still get blurred and there is no point in shooting them.
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From this panorama, the most famous fragment was the “skeleton” or “ spine of the lizard ”, which the media roared in February 2013. He even managed to get into the Russian Wikipedia , as evidence of Martian life. It is true, then they realized it and “lowered” it simply to a “Curiosity photo”.



It seems you can’t say anything, only you can believe in Martian dinosaurs, if you don’t look around the whole neighborhood. And there are a lot of such “laces”. Apparently the breed contributes. For the time being, NASA is evading a solid answer, whether it is a rock: volcanic or sedimentary. But research has already been done, it remains only to wait for the results. I tend to the volcanic version.

Now, on the panorama you can cover all the open spaces, and see other results of the Martian wind. For example, I really like this dragon:



The lowland in the central part of the panorama is Yellowknifle Bay, where Curiosity spent all winter and spring. There he found evidence that it was a body of water that contained water suitable for human drinking and microbial habitat. True signs of life is not found .



To better understand the geography is useful to look at the map of the movements of the rover.
The panorama was filmed when he was at the point marked with the numbers "102-111"



Now Curiosity is completing a detour of this region, called Glenelg, and is located in the Shaler section, which was briefly examined on the 120th sol. Two weeks ago, the rover returned to these interesting layered sediments.



A preliminary hypothesis explaining this geology is the effect of water. On Earth, a similar rock is formed at the bottom of rivers or other bodies of water with a sandy bottom.

I have recently laid out a fragment of this section.

A little about practice.
All the original photos are on the open NASA JPL server.
I use two programs for panoramas: Microsoft ICE and Kolor Autopano Giga 2.5.
ICE copes well with large canvases, if they are not strongly affected by the sphericity of the lens or differences in illumination, that is, such as on this 681-megapixel. panorama. The difference in lighting, more precisely in the duration of exposure, occurs when the rover elements fall into the frame. As a result, the automatic metering of the camera thinks that the area is better lit and shortens the shutter speed. Such frames are best pulled manually before assembly. With large panoramas ICE copes worse. For example, I collected this piece by piece, making up manually in Photoshop. One joint is clearly visible where the difference in illumination in the sky is visible.

Kolor Autopano Giga 2.5 better cope with the sphericity and the difference in lighting. But sometimes, aligning the illumination of different parts of the frame, on the contrary, it unnecessarily highlights fragments where it is not necessary to do this. Usually I collect black and white images of NavCam with this program - it copes with them better. And the extra whiteness of the image areas here is not so critical.



But I'm so, lover. If you need a professional master class on 360-degree panoramas, then contact Andrei Bodrov - he is really a guru. I have already talked about a pair of his Martian works. You can try to persuade him to write about this on Habré, but I have not yet made such a request.

I recently went through my “archives” and found that quite a few small panoramas of Curiosity had already accumulated, which had not been officially published anywhere. It will be necessary to lay them out too, but first pour onto GigaPan, otherwise I don’t think there are many enthusiasts who are ready to download pictures of 20-40 mb each.