Making Yourself at Home on Mars

One of the most interesting results of NASA's policy to make its planetary images widely and freely available is that talented photographers around the world have combined and extended the photos to make clearer or wider views of what it's like to be on another world.

A wonderful example can be found at a site for panoramic (360-degree) images, where photographer Andrew Bodrov has made one of the most exciting space images I have yet seen:
http://www.360cities.net/image/mars-gigapixel-panorama-curiosity-solar-days-136-149#-410.49,13.54,42.5

Bodrov stitched together 407 different images from two different cameras aboard the Curiosity rover on the red planet Mars. You can see the rover itself and the "Yellowknife Bay" neighborhood that it was exploring at the time that it did the first experiment drilling into a Mars rock. The large mountain in the distance is Mt. Sharp, the rover's ultimate destination.

I encourage you to play with the image for a while. There are controls at the upper left to help you move around and your cursor also gives you control of the speed and direction with which you move through this rich image. Enjoy the details of the rover's machinery and the wide range of rock formations around the little robot visitor.

Remarkable New Mars Panorama

For your viewing pleasure, here is a dynamic 360-degree panorama of what you would see around you if you were with the Curiosity Rover on Mars, created from NASA images by Danish photographer Hans Nyberg. Note the tall mountain, Mt. Sharp, in the background.   Note that the picture above is only a static appetizer. You have to click on the link below to get to the really wonderful, processed panorama that you can move through.

http://www.panoramas.dk/mars/curiosity-first-color-360.html

Once you are there click on the box with the four arrows inside the picture to have it go full screen on your computer. The colors have been changed a bit to show you what the scene would look like in Earth sunlight, but the level of detail is quite spectacular.  Several people I have shown this to have commented that it really gives them the sense of what it might be like to stand on the surface of the red planet as a visitor.