MSL Curiosity Lands Safely in Gale Crater, Landing and Commissioning Activity Period 1A, sols 0-8 Options

[iMPREPREX]

Here's my take at SOL 3 - uploaded to 360cities.net in the form of that 457 MB TIFF I stitched together from the current raw images. You can revolve around in 360 degrees. I hope you enjoy. The resolution is awesome.

http://www.360cities.net/image/mars-panora...mages-the-world

And I dig that SOL 2 one that just came out. The sun looks amazing.

[jamescanvin]

Here is my full resolution attempt at the mastcam34 images avaiable so far.



James

[Tesheiner]

Here's my take at SOL 3 - uploaded to 360cities.net in the form of that 457 MB TIFF I stitched together from the current raw images. You can revolve around in 360 degrees. I hope you enjoy. The resolution is awesome.

Beautiful! I could stay the whole morning just moving around.

Q: Is there any reason to use TIFF instead of JPG with "lossless" compression? The latter would save a lot of space.

[iMPREPREX]

Beautiful! I could stay the whole morning just moving around.

Q: Is there any reason to use TIFF instead of JPG with "lossless" compression? The latter would save a lot of space.

I don't know much about images. It was just luck that I even pulled it off.

That said (me being a newb), I didn't want to risk it due to me not knowing, so I kept it in it's original size when it was done.

I'm sure you're right. Actually, see? I didn't even know there WAS a lossless JPG!

But I will check it out. And thanks for the compliment.

[Tesheiner]

I'm sure you're right. Actually, see? I didn't even know there WAS a lossless JPG!

On most image editors you can select the "quality" (read compression) of the JPG output.

[jamescanvin]

I'm not sure that setting quality=100 actually produces a lossless file (not JPEG-LS) I use PNG for lossless output. However as the source images are jpegs there is very little harm in using a little compression to get to more managable file sizes, I normally use jpeg quality between 90 and 95 with no obvious degradation to my eye.

[pospa]

Here is the MSL Sundial. I stacked a few images of the dial. I also did a 3x, trying to read the small print all over the dial... (no luck... due to JPG artifacts!)

PDP8E & Toma B, happy to satisfy your curiosity
MSL sundial / calibration target is spare piece of flight hw from MER project. It was many years on somebody's desk untill was decided to "update" it for MSL and mount it on Curiosity's deck. On the sidewalls you could see following messages and illustrations (for future human explorers):



In hi-res, and more details in this article

[James Sorenson]

Excellent Work James!

Thought I'd share my version to.

[James Sorenson]

[RoverDriver]

PDP8E & Toma B, happy to satisfy your curiosity
MSL sundial / calibration target is spare piece of flight hw from MER project. It was many years on somebody's desk untill was decided to "update" it for MSL and mount it on Curiosity's deck. On the sidewalls you could see following messages and illustrations (for future human explorers):
...

I always wondered what is the functionality of the festooned collar on the central peg.

Paolo

[pospa]

I always wondered what is the functionality of the festooned collar on the central peg. Paolo

I hope the explanation from this document might help:

"The first problem we encountered was that the dial had to be fabricated long before the landing sites on Mars were to be selected, but a sundial’s hour lines very much depend on its latitude, whether you’re on Earth or on Mars. Thus, we couldn’t engrave hour and date lines onto the dial ahead of time. Instead, we decided to take advantage of the fact that everyone would be viewing images of the MarsDial and its shadow on the Web, so we could superimpose the needed lines later, by digital methods. Second, we realized that the dial’s gnomon needed a nodus, so we put a 2-centimeter (nearly 1-inch) diameter sphere on the top and a petal-like “daisy wheel” structure lower down. The sphere acts as our nodus when the Sun is nearly overhead (as will happen midday for the near-equatorial latitudes where the rovers will land), but when the shadow of the sphere falls off the 8- centimeter-square face of the dial, then the petal will step in to act as the nodus."

[MahFL]

I always wondered what is the functionality of the festooned collar on the central peg.

Paolo

This link explains it, hover your mouse pointer over the collar.

Sundial

[climber]

Just sharing a nice link I came across today. I haven't seen it on here yet so sorry if I am repeating.

Curiosity - 360-degree panorama

Thanks Zefler, I understand we must avoid whoua's and ho's but this is one of the best thing I've seen that give you the feeling to actually been there....except that we don't see Mt Sharp yet! Works beautifully on an IPad

[JebbPA]

The raw image site now has an instrument section: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/

hope that has not been posted before!

[James Sorenson]

Anyone know if they plan to image the deck with Mastcam before they start driving test's next week?