Watch: Mars rover captures its highest-resolution panorama yet
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Together, the images include a whopping 1.8 billion pixels.
NASA's Curiosity rover has captured its highest-resolution panorama yet of the Martian surface.
How’s this for 2020 vision? Over the holidays, I took a series of high-res photos of my hometown on #Mars. This panorama is made up of a crisp 1.8 billion pixels. It’s my most detailed view to date.
— Curiosity Rover (@MarsCuriosity) March 4, 2020
Zoom in: https://t.co/F2VAjvAVVV pic.twitter.com/nTMhOTx2Di
The composition has stitched together more than 1,000 images taken during the Thanksgiving break between November 24 and December 1 and were then carefully assembled over the ensuing months.
Together, the images include a whopping 1.8 billion pixels.
To snap these pictures and create a panorama, NASA's Curiosity rover used the photo lens on the rover's Mast Camera.
It relied on its medium-angle lens to produce a lower-resolution, nearly 650-million-pixel panorama that includes the rover's deck and a robotic arm.
Both panoramas reveal Curiosity's current home of Glen Torridon.
"This is the first time during the mission we've dedicated our operations to a stereo 360-degree panorama," said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity's project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
On Mars, Glen Torridon is full of intriguing clay mineral deposits that Curiosity has been observing.
It's located in Gale Crater, a vast and dry ancient lake bed with a 16,404-foot mountain at its centre.