NASA's
Mars Rover Opportunity catches its own late-afternoon shadow in this
dramatically lit view eastward across Endeavour Crater on Mars.
The rover used the panoramic camera (Pancam) between about 4:30 and 5:00
p.m. local Mars time to record images taken through different filters
and combined into this mosaic view.
Most of the component images
were recorded during the 2,888th Martian day, or sol, of Opportunity's
work on Mars (March 9, 2012). At that time, Opportunity was spending
low-solar-energy weeks of the Martian winter at the Greeley Haven
outcrop on the Cape York segment of Endeavour's western rim. In order to
give the mosaic a rectangular aspect, some small parts of the edges of
the mosaic and sky were filled in with parts of an image acquired
earlier as part of a 360-degree panorama from the same location.
Opportunity has been studying the western rim of Endeavour Crater since
arriving there in August 2011. This crater spans 14 miles (22
kilometers) in diameter, or about the same area as the city of Seattle.
This is more than 20 times wider than Victoria Crater, the largest
impact crater that Opportunity had previously examined. The interior
basin of Endeavour is in the upper half of this view.
The mosaic
combines about a dozen images taken through Pancam filters centered on
wavelengths of 753 nanometers (near infrared), 535 nanometers (green)
and 432 nanometers (violet). The view is presented in false color to
make some differences between materials easier to see, such as the dark
sandy ripples and dunes on the crater's distant floor.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State Univ.
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