Mars Rover Curiosity Sends First Full-Color Panorama of Its New Martian Home

forget the boring parlor tricks.
let's zap some rocks on Mars!

I so enjoy the pictures. Keep them coming!;)

I love how every photo from Mars is sepia tone. A sepia tone world.

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"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours"

- Stephen Roberts

Always strikes a nerve with me when there are blocked/blacked out portions of these photos with no perceivable reason for being so. I'd like to see the real world version of this image, the one that shows it as our eyes would see it, not brighted for detail, as anyone that has played with contrast/brightness, sometimes you lose subtle details.

Playing Devil's Advocate since 1978

"The only constant in the universe is change"
-Heraclitus of Ephesus 535 BC - 475 BC

@CodeZero

Perhaps you don't understand that this is a mosaic. It is 130 different photos taken at different times that were stitched together. The "blacked out" portions are areas where photos were not taken. There is no real world version to look at, unless you look at the 130 source photos separately.

@Democedes, I fully understand that it's a mosaic, however there is no obvious reason that the photos in those areas were not used, if it were a true 360 image as alleged that is, it would contain those captures, even if it's just the back of the rover, they exist and should have been included... and the article clearly states that the images were brightened and that the picture is not what it actually looks like, so yeah, there are "real world" images, ie not edited to look brighter...

Playing Devil's Advocate since 1978

"The only constant in the universe is change"
-Heraclitus of Ephesus 535 BC - 475 BC

Thats like the coolest thign ever dude. WOw.

www.Go-Private.tk

Codezero,
Ptssss, hey buddie, little secret. NASA deleted the Martians standing around Curiosty. You know, they did want them in the picture.And now you know!;)

..........................................
See life in all its beautiful colors, and
from different perspectives too!

@CodeZero "they exist and should have been included"

Huge assumption on your part. Why would they waste time and bandwidth imaging the ass end of the rover in HD? They already know what that looks like. It makes sense that they would only take pictures of what was relevant to the task at hand.

i agree with CodeZero. its obvious that NASA purposefully blacked out certain parts of the image to prevent the masses from seeing things that are hidden to mankind. maybe pyramids or other ancient alien artifacts....

"You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes." -Morpheus

really? Hide things from the masses??? yeah i bet right behind the rover a big huge mars alien was following it, along with its pyramids behind them... come on dude really?! Is this how you live your life everyday???? Thinking everything is propaganda? I get it, there are things in this world that are b.s. and hidden... but I dont believe that NASA is hiding aliens... but everything can be justified in ones head, so no mater what I say, it makes no difference to you sooooo...... 99%!!!

yes and there are even alien bases on the moon. there are many pictures that shows clear evidence of nasa "censuring"/removing certain ares of maps. its obvious that nasa is denying the existence of aliens. open your eyes.....

"You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes." -Morpheus

I'm continually amazed how people don't live beyond their fingertips or What (some) Scientists Say is Fact. Why? The universe is wrought with mystery and unknowns and if history is any indication science fictions soon becomes science fact and science fact likewise becomes science fiction. We already know the government keeps secrets. Big ones. What better one that would turn our social system upside down? If you don't think the government believes that is motivation to hide information from the public then you obviously haven't done your own homework into the NASA commissioned Brookings report back in the 60s. You think this is the only report coming to this conclusion? Come on.... Astronomical scientists are now talking about earth-like worlds orbiting other planets and even making the leap that...hey maybe alien civilizations DO exist....WHAT? While the evidence that we faked the moon mission is sorely lacking, I'm not convinced that some presented evidence that artificiality on the moon or Mars is all bogus. Have you really examined what's been put forth or just dismissed it because it's outside your comfort zone of what you consider the Real World? While these first pictures may not be examples of such a coverup who's to say others don't exist? Have you really examined the evidence? Have you listened what astronauts (and other scientists) themselves have suggested may be the case? Or again, just dismissed them as retired wackos because their view is outside the norm?

here is my opinion.. if you look at all of the raw images that the rover took.. there is not any areas that are missing..... but those are all low res... not meaning that they are low res to nasa.. but low res to the public..... then when obviously the public demanded the high res image they got it.. all 107 mb png file..but amaizingly there is areas that are blacked out. but you can not say it is ares that didnt have photographed because in the other images these area are seen. you just are not bein allowed to see these areas in high res.... another words NASA does not want you to zoom in on the curtain area..... WHY THE HECK NOT???????????????????????????

totally bogus

so if nasa would release every photo that was taken in high res of this pan that the rover did... anyone here could just put the pictures together themselves and find that there is no missing areas... its to obvious that it is an attempt to hide high res areas

if you would like to look me up and talk about this subject.. that really has me irritated with all the money spent from our tax money.. please do look me up on facebook..... i am alan alan friday. that was 2 alans and then friday

Food for thought, with excellent NASA scientist and engineering and our satellites, we found and discovered more Mayan pyramids hidden in the jungle of Guatemala and in the sands of Egypt, no one knew was there.

With that said, I hope eventually we do find ancient alien artifacts on Mars too. Here's hop'n!

@dagget5

Or perhaps NASA is too busy doing real science to worry what the tin hat community will think.

I've been viewing the raw images from NASA on their webpage. So no assumpiton, there are images in thier cache that they didn't put into this composit. I've seen them. And to say that a multibillon dollar project wouldn't test the camera in every possible waypoint is just daft, it took over 10 years to get that beast up there, you'd want to make sure everything moves and performs as advertised. I never said they are hiding martian life or evidence of such, just that there are areas of this image that are left off on purpose. If you were going to just stop at some point, you wouldn't pick up again x amount of degrees later just to drop them again etc. There would be clear linear cut offs, not the partial crap we see in the image. And even NASA's "RAW" images are not full res. And when looking for something small, high res is the way to go. Can you imagine for 1 second what would happen to this world if we did found even a bug on mars... most religions would risk collapse, there must be a reason why, for as long as the vatacan existed, they denied any extra terrestrial life, yet within the last 10 years, they now say it's possible. What changed?

Playing Devil's Advocate since 1978

"The only constant in the universe is change"
-Heraclitus of Ephesus 535 BC - 475 BC

And if you can't look at that photo and see that almost ALL the equpiment onboard has been "left off"of the image then you are daft.

Playing Devil's Advocate since 1978

"The only constant in the universe is change"
-Heraclitus of Ephesus 535 BC - 475 BC

@CodeZero

you are correct maybe some insects surrounded the vehicle. or even they have some equipment on board that they haven't told us about. maybe a cage or something.

"You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes." -Morpheus

Really? Staging the whole thing? Aliens? Pyramids? Bugs on the ground? These are the reasons you guys come up with for NASA leaving out a relatively small area on a 360 degree panorama of another world?

Not that those reasons are impossible, but you guys didn't stop to think that this rover is literally one of the most advanced machines we the human race have ever sent to another world and that maybe, just maybe, NASA didn't want to let every other country and individual in the world have a nice good look at the hardware so that everyone and their mother could reverse engineer the thing?

racer79,

NASA was embarrassed to show the Martian graffiti! And what made it worse; the spelling was wrong, sheesh. Those Martians are such morons, they can't even spell right!

I'm going to again state, that I ever said aliens or bugs were the reason for the lack of completion in this image, I did pose a question about them.

However, having worked with informtion at the highest levels of classification when I was in the Air Force, blacking out images that would display a piece of equipment that is classified is nothing new.

Playing Devil's Advocate since 1978

"The only constant in the universe is change"
-Heraclitus of Ephesus 535 BC - 475 BC

Guys, I found this on another site pertaining to the images from Curiosity.

"Mission scientists pieced the 79 photos into a mosaic, with black boxes indicating hi-res images not yet returned by the rover."

http://www dot csmonitor dot com/Science/2012/0813/What-s-Mars-rover-Curiosity-up-to-now-video

You are NASA, you want funding so that your daughter can have braces to remove the uglies from her face and your son can play rec leage football.

Why would you hide aliens?

What would bring more funding to NASA than discovering life on Mars, intellegent life at that? A spot of grey algae would get them hundreds of millions more.

An honest alien would result in a 100 billion dollars of funding to send men to Mars, making NASA workers rich while making politicians jump in glee - since the public would totally back the spending increase and much would stick in their pockets.

I get being cynnical and untrusting of people, but have some faith in good old fashioned human greed - no one has ever been let down trusting in that!!!

ACCELERATED EVOLUTION ON MARS

What makes this new Mars exploration so special (for me as a radiation biologist) is the fact, that the rovers energy supply is by about 5 kg of plutonium 238, providing about 120 W electric energy for at least five years. Thats fine, I would say from an engineers point of view, and I would also like to drive my old Benz with this sort of low-emission, low-cost and low-maintenace type of fuel.
But the radiation-biologist in me (and I hope you agree somehow) has to wonder about the long term consequences of 5 kg plutonium, a potent alpha emitter, if it comes to its mutatgenic effects in living organisms. Assuming the plutonium is relased from the mars rover and evenly spread over the hypothetical mars ecosphere, it would cause a tremendous rise of the mutation rate in all cells, whether low prokaryotes or in higher and multi-cellular creatures like plants or animals or anything else in between. This means the 5 years mission of the man-made Mars rover will not only explore the presence of live on Mars, but if there is any, it will also drive evolution by increasing the number of new mutants. So scientists will not only be the silent observers, but active players of an extra-terrestrial evolution of life.

I am afraid, that with this man-made mutation burden, the mars creatures will indeed soon look like those in Tim Burtons "Mars Attacks". But for this, we have to blame nobody else than ourself.

I am more than worried now looking up the sky at night. There are not only beautiful meteor showers and the romantic moon, but from now on the laboratory of accelerated evolution.

Read more at http://broken-radius.blogspot.de/2012/08/accelerating-evolution-on-mars.html