Last night on Twitter someone posted a ‘selfie’ taken by the Mars Curiosity rover.
It’s quite a photograph, particularly since it captures a fantastic piece of human technology amidst the landscape of another planet. The detail is what makes the picture. If you click to get a larger view you can see the nuts and bolts holding the rover together and the waves of sand on the Martian surface. My reaction was immediate.
Don’t forget how amazing this is. A robot on Mars. Mars! pic.twitter.com/rZnvwNLwsO /via @DaveThroupEA
— Stephen Curry (@Stephen_Curry) May 9, 2014
And it set me hunting for even higher resolution pictures, which didn’t take very long at all. The one below from the Wikipedia page on the Curiosity rover and was taken in November 2012 on a nice sunny sol.
Curiosity Self-Portrait. Image courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech.
The picture is a composite of several photographs which I think explains why it appears to have been taken by someone standing to one side of the rover. Better still, the original is a huge image of over 5000 by 7000 pixels so if you click here you can zoom in and have it fill your entire screen. It’s not quite the same thing as being there but is still a breath-taking visual feast. Enjoy.
