Rover Sends Back An Incredible Photo From The Surface Of Mars

Date: May 23, 2012 | Author: Josh Tyler | Category: Sci-Fi In Real Life

So much of the time the photos NASA sends back from Mars are vague snapshots of dust or closeups of bland pebbles. But not this time. The following photo was captured by NASA’s Mars Rover Opportunity and it just may be the most beautiful image yet captured on our nearest neighbor’s planetary surface…

The photo was taken using a panoramic camera in the late Mars afternoon (around 4:30 to 5:00 pm Mars time). Here’s the catch… that’s not how it would actually look to the human eye. The image was captured using different filters which were combined to make this mosaic view. NASA admits all of this on their official site so it’s no like they’re trying to fool anyone, but, here’s my question: Why can’t NASA ever just take an actual, you know, a really good one shot no filter photo?

This is an ongoing problem with our space agency. They either take fuzzy photos which look like crap or stunning photos which are only stunning because they’re put together using fancy image tricks and wizardry. We can send a probe to Mars but we can’t seem to take a decent picture of it, at least not without cheating. Baffling. The next time we send up a Mars rover someone remember to duct tape on a Kodak.

Comments

http://www.facebook.com/marshall.mccoy Marshall McCoy

Remember the rovers which were only supposed to last maybe 6 months have been there over 5 years now. The digital cameras available at the time were not what we have now so they are working with what we call obsolete equipment and doing a great job!
- JT
  
  I don’t know. Digital cameras were pretty darn good as much as 10 years ago. I’ve got one that’s 10 years old and still takes some pretty fantastic pictures. Digital photo technology is not exactly new at this point.
  - http://www.facebook.com/rjkmassey Richard Massey
    
    Or perhaps you can’t see a thing without these filters on…due to low light, haze, the atmosphere or something similar. Just a thought. It would explain why they only ever have crap pictures or filtered pics.
    - JT
      
      Could well be. Whatever the reason, we end up never really getting a decent, true pic. It is worth noting that all the photos NASA puts out seem to have issues like this, whether it’s photos from the moon landing or just a shot of Earth as seen from space. They never really deliver a true photo, it’s usually filtered and composited. It’s not like this is only a problem with their Mars photos.
      - Bryan Schmidt
        
        They do deliver true photos sometimes. But they are not very pretty, and most of the time, you can’t tell the difference between the ground and the sky. It’s not they are incapable of strapping a Kodak camera to the rover (their cameras are actually a lot more capable than our digital cameras), it’s that the way a camera works here in our atmosphere is different from the way a camera works on mars. There are many factors, dust and composition of atmosphere being the biggest.
        
        That, and Kodak is no longer making cameras.
http://www.facebook.com/Incorrigible010 Danny Miller

Josh, there’s a crucial factor you’re neglecting here – dust. It’s unlikely NASA would have been ABLE to get this deep of a panorama shot with just your standard camera lens in the dusty Martian atmosphere.

Since using different filters allows NASA to use different wavelengths that can see PAST the dust, they’ve taken a number of different shots using several filters and combined them into the image you see here. This technique is very common in most high-definition space photography – particularly in deep-field shots such as this, or when they’ve photographing nebulae and other known dusty environments.
- JT
  
  I guess but we’ve seen some pretty super clear photos of the Martian surface that weren’t obscured by dust when taken from space. You’d think if there was that much persistant haze round the clock everywhere on the planet it would affect those photos as well.
  
  Though it could be that those photos were taken with special filters as well.
matoosh

Maybe they should start using Pictogram instead.
MishaBurnett

Cut NASA some slack, okay? It’s the flippin’ *surface of the planet Mars*, not the 7-11 down the street.
- JT
  
  I wouldn’t blame them for being unable to get good pics at that 7-11. Show up with a camera at the one by my house and you’re just going to get robbed and stabbed.
  - MishaBurnett
    
    Fair enough. But consider just how blase we have become about technology, I mean, here we have photographs taken on another planet and the author is kvetching about the quality? Whatever happened to “Oh my God it’s freaking pictures of Mars”?
Teamyankee

For a start.. the rovers don’t have a full colour camera! It’s a hi res mono camera with coloured filters.. better quality that way.
It’s a science intrument.. not a “happy snapper” you can buy in the highstreet!

Giant Freakin Robot