An Interactive Version of Curiosity's Latest "Selfie"

By Nancy Atkinson - May 1, 2014 at 5:59 PM UTC | Planetary Science
Curiosity-at-Kimberley-Sol-613_1a_Ken-Kremer.jpg

Mars Panorama - Curiosity rover: Martian solar day 613

in

Out of this World

The Curiosity rover looks like she's concentrating hard on her tasks on Mars, and now you can zoom around and see what it would look like to be standing next to the rover in Gale Crater.

This new interactive image put together by panoramacist

Andrew Bodrov

from Estonia uses some of the latest imagery from Curiosity's MAHLI camera, taken on Sol 610 (April 27, 2014 back on Earth) and additional images from the rover's 34-millimeter Mast Camera to create the full panoramic scene. The mosaic, which stretches about 30,000 pixels width, includes 138 images taken on Sol 610. Bodrov

used 138 images and it stretches about 30,000 pixels wide.

You may wonder how the rover took this picture of itself without the camera or the robotic arm showing up in the images. It's done by combining multiple pictures taken with the MAHLI camera that is mounted at the end of the robotic arm. "Wrist" motions and turret rotations on the arm allowed MAHLI to acquire the images, and the arm was positioned out of the shot in the images or portions of images used in the mosaic.

Check out this video explanation by NASA:

You can see more of Bodrov's wonderful panoramas in

past articles on Universe Today.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com