The “flattened” photograph of the Mars landscape includes all the Gale Crater that is the cradle of the Curiosity rover, then the Slangpos Crater, the jagged ridge of Vera Rubin, Mount Sharp and Central Butte.
Beyond the names of the places filmed that will tell little to many, the beauty of the image is all in the breadth of the landscape involved combined with a creepy overall definition. We downloaded the 717 MB .TIFF file made available by NASA on the dedicated page, and the detail of the photo is impressive.
The panorama was taken between November 24 and December 1, 2019, when the Curiosity team was absent for the holidays close to the American Thanksgiving holiday.
The rover therefore had few other tasks to perform while waiting for the team to return, and had the rare opportunity to resume the surrounding environment for several days in a row without moving. The images were taken over 6.5 and a half hours spread over four days.
The choice was necessary so that the images were all taken at the same time of day on Mars, in order to obtain constant illumination of the panorama.
The photo is in fact composed of more than 1,000 images that have been joined in the following months: and the largest version of this “final puzzle” contains almost 1.8 billion pixels of Martian landscape.
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https://www.dday.it/redazione/34413/panorama-marte-rover-curiosity-1-8-miliardi-di-pixel
