Curiosity sends home Panorama Beside 'Namib Dune' , Mount Sharp

Ever since Curiosity first started heading toward Mount Sharp I've been intrigued by the dark area at the base of the mountain , nearly 3.5 years later Curiosity has arrived and sent back this panorama of the area and Namib Dune , the base of the dune is about 23 feet from the mastcam.


Interestingly NASA say that through orbital observations they've calculated the dunes in the Bagnold field move about 3ft per Earth year , who'd of thought such a thin atmosphere would do that.

The bottom of the dune nearest the rover is about 23 feet (7 meters) from the camera. This downwind face of the dune rises at an inclination of about 28 degrees to a height of about 16 feet (5 meters) above the base. The center of the scene is toward the east; both ends are toward the west.

A color adjustment has been made approximating a white balance, so that rocks and sand appear approximately as they would appear under Earth's sunlit sky. A brightness adjustment accommodates including rover hardware in the scene.

The mission's examination of dunes in the Bagnold field, along the rover's route up the lower slope of Mount Sharp, is the first close look at active sand dunes anywhere other than Earth
Link to image
The browser picture size is 8.3MB and there's also a tif version of the picture to download which weighs in at 173 MB.
Link to site with tif download link

Shame the tide's out.

It would be nice if they didn't Photoshop out the sky. Or at least mention that they did so that people are not mislead.

a reply to: CraftBuilder

The sky is there if you look at the full picture , it's the small picture that makes it look odd.

a reply to: gortex

is somebody smoking up there

The wheels look a bit beat up:

a reply to: CraftBuilder

They've blended it and smoothed it out to solid tones. They usually do. If they didn't it would have stark shade changes where the images were stitched and wouldn't look so pretty.

a reply to: gortex

who'd of thought such a thin atmosphere would do that.

Agreed.
It is surprising to me.
But I am not an astrophysicist or an astro-geologist or whatever it takes to know that.

Im no expert, but to me it looks like some clever photoshopping has gone on there..

Just my 2

a reply to: gortex

originally posted by: gortex

Interestingly NASA say that through orbital observations they've calculated the dunes in the Bagnold field move about 3ft per Earth year , who'd of thought such a thin atmosphere would do that.

That's the thing, it does, all the while the wind you would just about feel blowing. It just goes to show how superfine the surface material is.
I don't know about the colour filtering though, it just doesn't look right.


Just to add, the link keeps crashing for me, but you get a good feel for it, and can zoom in at the ATS address file here,

files.abovetopsecret.com...

a reply to: buddhablack

If you can download the tif version , it's a far better image.

Plus there's this.

A color adjustment has been made approximating a white balance, so that rocks and sand appear approximately as they would appear under Earth's sunlit sky. A brightness adjustment accommodates including rover hardware in the scene.

The colour isnt the issue for me, its the way the sand dune blends to the rockier area, and the outline of the rover onto the dune. As I say, im no expert.

a reply to: gortex

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

yeah they have holes in them, how did that happen?

when you consider that it`s top speed is only 1.5 inches per second how could it impact a rock with enough force to make holes in the wheels? That must be some really thin metal.

A color adjustment has been made approximating a white balance, so that rocks and sand appear approximately as they would appear under Earth's sunlit sky. A brightness adjustment accommodates including rover hardware in the scene.

This is the part that I don't like. I don't care about what it would look like IF it were Earth... I want to know what it looks like on Mars!

If you want to see a real 360-degrees version of this panorama (instead of a flat image with distorted geometry), Andrew Bodrov is your friend: www.360cities.net...

That dune sure is impressive.

originally posted by: charolais

A color adjustment has been made approximating a white balance, so that rocks and sand appear approximately as they would appear under Earth's sunlit sky. A brightness adjustment accommodates including rover hardware in the scene.

This is the part that I don't like. I don't care about what it would look like IF it were Earth... I want to know what it looks like on Mars!

Here's a visual guide for you:

These three versions of the same scene on Mars, captured by NASA's Curiosity rover, reflect three different choices that scientists can make in presenting the colors recorded by the camera. The left version is the raw, unprocessed color view as it is received directly from Mars. The center rendering is an estimate of the "natural" color that humans would see if they visited Mars. The right version shows the result of white-balancing, which interprets the scene as if it were viewed under Earthlike lighting conditions.

www.nbcnews.com...

Any colour calibration is a bit arbitrary, and I tend to imagine Mars more-or-less the way it looks like in MAHLI camera images:



But the only real way to know is to send people up there, or even just send a normal DSLR camera that would take the same kind of images as photographers take on Earth.

a reply to: gortex

That's beautiful!

Thanks for sharing!

originally posted by: Soylent Green Is People

The wheels look a bit beat up:

Din't they replace some of these tires a few months ago...?

originally posted by: zatara

originally posted by: Soylent Green Is People

The wheels look a bit beat up:

Din't they replace some of these tires a few months ago...?

Had to smile at that, as I recall, NASA talked about the condition of the wheels some time ago, and there were chunks out of them then. I guess they have some lessons learnt by now, other than the original preferences. The damage is already noted as quite serious, much more than in the picture seen above.



Use the link for more clarity,
files.abovetopsecret.com...

www.planetary.org...://www.google.co.uk/

Since then they have come to the conclusion that much of the damage is metal fatigue from bending and flexing, and eventually fractures of the skin of the wheels, though the wheels have strong rims and reinforcers to maintain the roundness, I presume both vertically and laterally. I don't see much in the way of corrosion to weaken the wheels further as yet, but that's surely bound to happen at some stage, all according.

originally posted by: charolais
This is the part that I don't like. I don't care about what it would look like IF it were Earth... I want to know what it looks like on Mars!

Do you know what a white balance or Color balance is?
Color balance and brightness adjustment is necessary to actually retrieve a picture which shows how it actually is - not how it would be on earth. From your post it seems you don't want to see the actual colors - or don't have enough knowledge how cameras work.

Oh, by the way, your eyes already got the color balance upgrade a long time ago - maybe you noticed it.

a reply to: Danowski

Well its understandably confusing when they say things like

the result of white-balancing, which interprets the scene as if it were viewed under Earthlike lighting conditions.

When they say things like that, it kind of makes it seem, to us laymen, that the image they are showing us is not what we would see on mars with our own eyes. It kind of makes it look like they are saying that this is what we would see in some alternate universe where mars has earth like lighting conditions instead of mars like lighting conditions.

But thanks for the correction, and I'm quite sure I speak on behalf of all of us here who are lacking in photography knowledge. Your apparent photography expertise is much needed in threads like this