posts

At 00:08:39 UTC Mastcam Left captured this beautiful photo of the inner rim of Gale Crater.From the blue sky to the greenish hills to the reddish ground in the foreground.It is interesting to note the color changes that have occurred in the hills in the distance, which can be observed by comparing this photo with a similar one taken just over a month ago (see… Read More »Curiosity Sol 2646, January 16, 2020

At 13:27:23 UTC Mastcam Right was filming Fobos in broad daylight in a clear blue sky.Fobos is visible to the right of the “famous black dot,” a flaw in Mastcam Right that has often prompted imaginative interpretations.The original image is a black-and-white encoding of the Bayer mask that has been converted to color through a process called “debayering” or “demosaicing.” In addition, the photo has… Read More »Curiosity Sol 45, September 21, 2012

Just out of curiosity, I wanted to extract the detail of Fobos from the previous image (see https://www.facebook.com/PianetaMarte.MdM/posts/2665892673493909), to enlarge and process it.Basically I subtracted the sky from the balanced image to verify the color of Fobos, also to verify the color balance that I normally perform on all color photos of Curiosity that I publish on this page.As you can see, the color of… Read More »Curiosity Sol 45, September 21, 2012 (Fobos 2X)

At 15:05:04 UTC the Mastcam Right has captured this very special rock.The morphology would suggest a volcanic rock but there are no volcanoes in the vicinity, then the color is very different from common volcanic rocks (see https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roccia_magmatica). I can not find words to describe the complexity and beauty of the details visible in this turquoise rock with purple hues, also note the partial reddish… Read More »Curiosity Sol 2639, January 8, 2020

At 20:33:20 UTC the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) captured this very close detail of a rock just partially cleaned by Curiosity’s rotating wire brush.The photo was taken from a distance of only 6.9 cm with a definition of 0.032 mm/pixel, thus covering an area of 5.07 cm X 3.76 cm.The concentric circular stripes are due to the abrasive action of Curiosity’s rotating wire brush,… Read More »Curiosity Sol 2640, January 9, 2020

At 12:21:06 UTC the Mastcam Right captured this beautiful stratified ridge, with two nice little hills in the distance and a very clear blue sky.In the ridge in the foreground, the lowest part of the photo, you can see several dark “flows” that look a lot like the famous RSLs (acronym for Recurring Slope Lineae, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_flows_on_warm_Martian_slopes) but smaller.The original image is a black and… Read More »Curiosity Sol 2635, January 4, 2020

At 01:14:42 UTC the Mastcam Right captured the right flank of this ridge formed by stratified rocks and fragmented slabs, against the background of another ridge in the distance and a clear blue sky.Note the difference in color between the various pieces of rock and the compact rocks of typical reddish color mostly due to deposited dust.The hills in the distance, by contrast, show a… Read More »Curiosity Sol 2618, Dec. 18, 2019

At 03:11:37 UTC the Mastcam Left has captured these beautiful blue rocks on the Red Planet!They seem out of context, as in many other cases in which Curiosity has photographed meteorites conspicuously “alien” to the surrounding environment, but in this case is their morphology in layers to tell us that this is not a meteorite but rocks of sedimentary origin.Of course, we have also already… Read More »Curiosity Sol 2620, Dec. 20, 2019

At 00:34:55 UTC the Mastcam Right captured this beautiful ridge formed by layered rocks and fragmented slabs, against the background of a clear blue sky.Note the color difference between the various pieces of “slab” rock and the compact rocks of typical reddish color mostly due to deposited dust.This is despite the fact that the sand is much darker in tone and bluish-turquoise in places.The original… Read More »Curiosity Sol 2616, Dec. 16, 2019