A 360-degree 'street view' from Mars
After seeing all the amazing imagery so far from NASA鈥檚 Mars rover Curiosity, I know everyone wants to go there and take in the visual treats of Gale Crater. With the help of a 360-degree panorama you can virtually explore Curiosity鈥檚 landing site; sort of like a Martian version of Google鈥檚 Street View.
Take a martian minute to explore the panorama at .
Photographer Andrew Bodrov stitched together images from Curiosity鈥檚 navigation cameras to create the panorama. 鈥淎fter seeing some of the stitches of Curiosity鈥檚 images at NASA鈥檚 website, I decided to stitch the panorama myself,鈥� Bodrov told Universe Today.
He uses PTGui panoramic stitching software from New House Internet Services BV () to create the 360-degree view of the mountains and sky surrounding the car-sized rover that successfully landed on Mars on August 6th.
鈥淣ASA has still not published enough source material to assemble a complete panorama in color,鈥� Bodrov says. He used a color filter to make the images more representable. He also added that the sky and sun in the panorama were added in Adobe Photoshop. He used the size of the Sun seen in this spectacular of a Martian sunset from NASA鈥檚 Spirit rover taken in 2005 as a guide.
While Bodrov says the high-resolution images themselves are amazing, just seeing a picture of another world is more inspiring. 鈥淚t鈥檚 very nice to see the achievements of humanity which allows you to see a picture of another world,鈥� he said.
Bodrov says he has more than 12 years experience creating panoramas including an for the Russian Federal Space Agency of a Soyuz/Progress launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in August 2011.
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