Finally! The Mars Rover “Opportunity” returned an image of the Martian Landscape that doesn’t look like it was taken in the Mojave Desert. The eerie textures and coloring lend an other-worldliness appearance to this image, unlike the images that comedian Dennis Miller asserts “Looks like Barstow!”
Photo Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
Click here for a Larger Image.
As NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity continues to traverse from “Erebus Crater” toward “Victoria Crater,” the rover navigates along exposures of bedrock between large, wind-blown ripples. Along the way, scientists have been studying fields of cobbles that sometimes appear on trough floors between ripples.
They have also been studying the banding patterns seen in large ripples.This view, obtained by Opportunity’s panoramic camera on the rover’s 802nd Martian day (sol) of exploration (April 27, 2006), is a mosaic spanning about 30 degrees. It shows a field of cobbles nestled among wind-driven ripples that are about 20 centimeters (8 inches) high.
This is a false-color rendering that combines separate images taken through the panoramic camera’s 753-nanometer, 535-nanometer and 432-nanometer filters. The false color is used to enhance differences between types of materials in the rocks and soil.
OK — I admit that this is a “false color” image and isn’t representative of the natural sunlight on Mars, but if you were to pump sunlight up to the amount the Earth gets, you just might get a picture like this.
I originally was going to call this post “Mars Scape” or something weak like that until I asked the Damsel what I should use as a title. Without hesitation, she threw out “Toto — we’re not in Barstow anymore” and it stuck. Thanks, Damsel!