Comments on: Standing on Mars

By: wuffe

wuffe — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 16:52:49 +0000

The silence would be deafening. No wind, No trees. Only the stars to wander the sky.

By: Reidh

Reidh — Sat, 20 Oct 2012 16:25:42 +0000

the anaglyph looks just like the high desert seen from the 138 traveling west to east along the L.A. County border.

By: Reidh

Reidh — Sat, 20 Oct 2012 16:22:12 +0000

If it looks like a flash flood used to wash through there, and it smells like a… it looks like that.

By: carroll price

carroll price — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 17:53:32 +0000

Computer generated graphics are simply awesome.

By: Standing on Mars | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine | Kool Look | Scoop.it

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 14:09:13 +0000

[...] Astronomy | Curiosity | What would it look like to stand on Mars? [I had to shrink this image considerably to fit the width of my blog; click to properly enaresenate.] Space enthusiast Denny Bauer created this spectacular panorama of the Martian landscape using images from the Curiosity rover; he arduously stitched raw images together in Photoshop. The original shots were taken on Sol 64 (October 10, 2012; a "sol" is one Mars day and is slightly longer than an Earth day) using Curiosity’s MASTCAM. The view is wonderful: you can see small rocks in the foreground, all kinds of geology as you let your eye move upwards, and then finally the horizon and the central mountains of Gale Crater, Curiosity’s home, looming in the distance. It almost looks like a dusty summer day in northern California… except it’s the cold, distant, almost airless yet still dust-stormy surface of another planet. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jardmaster/8091648674/sizes/l/ http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=36952c05-441e-4463-9999-22a12e0fbb64 Not only that, but Denny made an even bigger, high-resolution image made of 65 subimages which I have no hope of showing you here. You can take a look at it at that link, or you can go to the 100+ megapixel pan-and-scan version where you can surf around the surface of Mars. It’s tremendous. Looking at this image I was thinking of what it would be like to stand there – properly outfitted in an insulated pressure suit, of course. And then I saw this 3D anaglyph picture Denny put together and really felt like I was standing on the Red Planet: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jardmaster/8090416212/sizes/l/in/photostream/ If you have red/cyan glasses, click that to get a bigger view and soak it in. He did a fantastic job of matching up the images (from Sol 60 using NAVCAM shots), and there’s no trace of the usual color edges you see in such images. It really is like you’re standing there! [...]

By: Nigel Depledge

Nigel Depledge — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 09:22:55 +0000

David (5) said:

While I appreciate the use of the Greek name for the god the Romans knew as Mars, I can’t be the only one who read that as “enarsenate”. Which, really, should be used to make pictures of Uranus larger. #yesIknowIm12

In fact, arsenate is a genuine term in chemistry. It refers to the trivalent anion AsO4.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 04:01:21 +0000

Looks like the back blocks in Afghanistan along the central plains areas of Oruzgan and Helmand.

By: Kevin M

Kevin M — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 01:48:37 +0000

Halfway between LA and Vegas.

By: Phil Seymour

Phil Seymour — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 00:55:17 +0000

Nice 3-D effect. I can rock my head side to side and the perspective changes as I pivot. Good work.

By: Neil Haggath

Neil Haggath — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 23:00:21 +0000

#13 Benny:
Yawn – here we go yet again.
This is a running joke between Dr. Plait and his readers. It began, a long time ago, with him using the made-up word “embiggen”, which I gather comes from The Simpsons. Now he makes up similar verbs, appropriate to the subject matter – in this case, “enaresenate”, as Ares is the Greek name for Mars.