APOD: Curiosity Rover at Rocknest on Mars (2012 Dec 27)

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Expand view Topic review: APOD: Curiosity Rover at Rocknest on Mars (2012 Dec 27)

Re: APOD: Curiosity Rover at Rocknest on Mars (2012 Dec 27)

by Raven » Fri Jan 18, 2013 5:25 pm

neufer wrote:Our most cherished space photos in the future will be pictures of "ourselves" in (soon to be fully documented) alien landscapes.
A cartoon immediately springs to mind, fully drawn on imaginary paper: airless cratered landscape with occasional tall sharp spires and a visibly curved horizon below a very active starscape -- with perhaps a Wolf-Rayet pinwheel spinning like a yin-yang medallion in the middle of the sky. On the ground, stretching forward from the camera, a blocky somewhat humanoid robot's shadow, elbows out to hold a camera. Front and center, two such robots leaning together to have their photos taken. The one on the left is raising his hand behind the head of the one on the right, two fingers extended upward in a V-shape.

(Edited to add: To be fair... the one on the right undoubtedly has scrawled on his chest, in lieu of a T-shirt, "I'm with Stupid" and an arrow pointing left.)

Re: APOD: Curiosity Rover at Rocknest on Mars (2012 Dec 27)

by neufer » Fri Jan 18, 2013 2:56 pm

Raven wrote:
Tourists and vanity: it afflicts even our machines.

Travel all the way to an alien world, stop in the middle of an alien landscape, and take a photo of yourself.

(Well, technically, take 55 partial photos of yourself, to be stitched into one -- each time photographing where your arm isn't. But notice the shadow cast on the upper left of the wheel directly below us, center bottom of the picture, and on the ground left of the wheel. What's casting that shadow? Not the semi-conical motor to the left; its shadow is recognizable just left of that shadow directly below. By elimination, the mystery shadow is "us", the camera, directly above.)
Our most cherished travel photos are always pictures of ourselves in (already fully documented) alien landscapes.

Our most cherished space photos in the future will be pictures of "ourselves" in (soon to be fully documented) alien landscapes.

Re: APOD: Curiosity Rover at Rocknest on Mars (2012 Dec 27)

by Raven » Fri Jan 18, 2013 2:20 pm

Tourists and vanity: it afflicts even our machines.

Travel all the way to an alien world, stop in the middle of an alien landscape, and take a photo of yourself.

(Well, technically, take 55 partial photos of yourself, to be stitched into one -- each time photographing where your arm isn't. But notice the shadow cast on the upper left of the wheel directly below us, center bottom of the picture, and on the ground left of the wheel. What's casting that shadow? Not the semi-conical motor to the left; its shadow is recognizable just left of that shadow directly below. By elimination, the mystery shadow is "us", the camera, directly above.)

Re: APOD: Curiosity Rover at Rocknest on Mars (2012 Dec 27)

by bystander » Wed Jan 16, 2013 6:16 am

Re: APOD: Curiosity Rover at Rocknest on Mars (2012 Dec 27)

by estrass » Wed Jan 16, 2013 5:14 am

You mean to tell me they have this rover on Mars and this is all we get to see? Cmon'.

Re: APOD: Curiosity Rover at Rocknest on Mars (2012 Dec 27)

by Beyond » Tue Jan 08, 2013 5:48 pm

Well... that was neat!!

Re: APOD: Curiosity Rover at Rocknest on Mars (2012 Dec 27)

by neufer » Tue Jan 08, 2013 2:58 pm

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Re: APOD: Curiosity Rover at Rocknest on Mars (2012 Dec 27)

by Wadsworth » Fri Dec 28, 2012 4:49 am

Excellent mosaic!
Go humanity!

Re: APOD: Curiosity Rover at Rocknest on Mars (2012 Dec 27)

by Beyond » Thu Dec 27, 2012 11:48 pm

Mactavish wrote:
Chris Peterson wrote:
geckzilla wrote:Rob, it still baffles me how not even a tiny part of the robotic arm is visible. You would think there would be at least one part or a few shadows present in enough of the images that there wouldn't be enough data to fill in the gaps.
There are even camera apps that can do this automatically now, taking several images in quick succession and removing everything that moves (so you get vacation pictures without people in them).
My wife wants one of these to remove a few wrinkles.
Well... wait a minute... wrinkles don't move, do they :?:

Re: APOD: Curiosity Rover at Rocknest on Mars (2012 Dec 27)

by Mactavish » Thu Dec 27, 2012 11:44 pm

Chris Peterson wrote:
geckzilla wrote:Rob, it still baffles me how not even a tiny part of the robotic arm is visible. You would think there would be at least one part or a few shadows present in enough of the images that there wouldn't be enough data to fill in the gaps.
There are even camera apps that can do this automatically now, taking several images in quick succession and removing everything that moves (so you get vacation pictures without people in them).
My wife wants one of these to remove a few wrinkles.

Re: APOD: Curiosity Rover at Rocknest on Mars (2012 Dec 27)

by Anthony Barreiro » Thu Dec 27, 2012 7:27 pm

rstevenson wrote: [...]

If it turns out that the tax paying public likes these sort of images, a future mission could carry an independant camera on a tripod, which it could set up and leave for a while. The rover could move around in its field of view doing the science work, then go back, pick up the camera and move to another location. Nature photographers do this all the time.

Rob
I think that's a great idea. It wouldn't be disorienting, and you could see the robots against more scenic backgrounds.

Re: APOD: Curiosity Rover at Rocknest on Mars (2012 Dec 27)

by rstevenson » Thu Dec 27, 2012 6:25 pm

orin stepanek wrote:Could that be shadow of the camera on the right front wheel and axle?
Yes, good catch. That's almost certainly a shadow of the mound of gadgets, which include the camera, on the end of the arm.

Once you start looking at shadows, there are oddities all over the place. That's not surprising, of course. They were trying to get a good image of the rover, so correct shadows would be a low priority, especially considering the sub-images would have been taken over a fairly long period of time during which the Sun was moving across the sky.

Rob

Re: APOD: Curiosity Rover at Rocknest on Mars (2012 Dec 27)

by emc » Thu Dec 27, 2012 5:20 pm

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/namerover/Winn ... ncedEssay/
“Curiosity is the passion that drives us through our everyday lives. We have become explorers and scientists with our need to ask questions and to wonder.” excerpt from Mars Science Laboratory naming contest, winning essay by Clara Ma, age 12
We can learn a lot from our kids. Clara mentions three questions in her essay, of the three I like "Why am I me?" the best. I expect we all wonder at our sense of self at some time or another. (I’m pretty sure M.C. Escher did!). For me it’s kind of like venturing out into deep space... where I happily drift untethered until my synapse snaps me back to more immediate physical things like posting here on SA*.

I hope you’re enjoying the holidays! May your spirit thrive and may you find sufficient answers to your important questions!

Re: APOD: Curiosity Rover at Rocknest on Mars (2012 Dec 27)

by emc » Thu Dec 27, 2012 4:47 pm

Re: APOD: Curiosity Rover at Rocknest on Mars (2012 Dec 27)

by geckzilla » Thu Dec 27, 2012 4:09 pm

Good job, Rob. Admittedly, I didn't spend too long searching. :)

Re: APOD: Curiosity Rover at Rocknest on Mars (2012 Dec 27)

by Psnarf » Thu Dec 27, 2012 3:47 pm

One of the parts masked out.
One of the parts masked out.
martian.jpg (8.79 KiB) Viewed 4559 times
Judging by the tracks, it took a bit of manoeuvring to get into position for the images. Was Curiosity moved in order to get such a wide panorama, or were the images taken from the same location, much like one stitches images side-by-side to get a wide panorama?

Re: APOD: Curiosity Rover at Rocknest on Mars (2012 Dec 27)

by Chris Peterson » Thu Dec 27, 2012 3:45 pm

geckzilla wrote:Rob, it still baffles me how not even a tiny part of the robotic arm is visible. You would think there would be at least one part or a few shadows present in enough of the images that there wouldn't be enough data to fill in the gaps.
There are two ways this can be done. Rob has described the low-tech approach, which is simply to fill in the mosaic with images made from different positions, where the arm wasn't in the way. This is completely trivial to do in editors like Photoshop. There are even camera apps that can do this automatically now, taking several images in quick succession and removing everything that moves (so you get vacation pictures without people in them).

There is also a higher tech approach that is often used to produce digital mosaics, and which can eliminate things like camera booms. This involves mapping each pixel in the images to actual coordinates, and producing a virtual image from that, which is then rendered into the image we see. This type of dataset can be used to render images with different perspectives or viewpoints, as well. It's how the Blue Marble images are produced, and it's how Martian mapping data is created.

Re: APOD: Curiosity Rover at Rocknest on Mars (2012 Dec 27)

by neufer » Thu Dec 27, 2012 3:41 pm

Re: APOD: Curiosity Rover at Rocknest on Mars (2012 Dec 27)

by orin stepanek » Thu Dec 27, 2012 2:45 pm

rstevenson wrote:
If I looked closely enough, I'm sure I could find other image artifacts here and there where, for example, shadows wouldn't look quite right or edges are at slightly the wrong angle. But since the whole picture is made up of 55 sub-images, I'd expect that anyway.

Rob
Could that be shadow of the camera on the right front wheel and axle?

Re: APOD: Curiosity Rover at Rocknest on Mars (2012 Dec 27)

by minkfarms » Thu Dec 27, 2012 2:42 pm

Great shot and like previous posts I was going to lament the picture creating an ever running conspiracy theory. Some people don't read or more likely don't have any reading comprehension. I think they should have edited out the scoop tracks too because they look like foot prints to the dubious conspirator. :roll:

Re: APOD: Curiosity Rover at Rocknest on Mars (2012 Dec 27)

by ritwik » Thu Dec 27, 2012 2:09 pm

APOD Robot wrote:the exciting possibility is that it could be from Mars itself ,the remains of fossils of extinct species is a subject matter of research. :wink:

Re: APOD: Curiosity Rover at Rocknest on Mars (2012 Dec 27)

by rstevenson » Thu Dec 27, 2012 1:50 pm

geckzilla wrote:Rob, it still baffles me how not even a tiny part of the robotic arm is visible. You would think there would be at least one part or a few shadows present in enough of the images that there wouldn't be enough data to fill in the gaps.
I found it!
arm_erased.jpg
You can see where they erased the rest of the arm, leaving this bit showing. It's from the bottom-left area of the rover's body, nearest the scoop marks in the sand. I expect they very deliberately left this for pixelators like me to find, so they can't be accused of trying to hide what they're doing.

If I looked closely enough, I'm sure I could find other image artifacts here and there where, for example, shadows wouldn't look quite right or edges are at slightly the wrong angle. But since the whole picture is made up of 55 sub-images, I'd expect that anyway.

Rob

Re: APOD: Curiosity Rover at Rocknest on Mars (2012 Dec 27)

by geckzilla » Thu Dec 27, 2012 1:38 pm

Rob, it still baffles me how not even a tiny part of the robotic arm is visible. You would think there would be at least one part or a few shadows present in enough of the images that there wouldn't be enough data to fill in the gaps.

Re: APOD: Curiosity Rover at Rocknest on Mars (2012 Dec 27)

by rstevenson » Thu Dec 27, 2012 1:32 pm

royalpalms6 wrote:How is Curiosty takeing photos of it's self?
Conceptually it's a fairly straightforward process, though actually doing the post-processing must be quite time consuming.

The arm with the camera on it moves around taking photos of Curiosity from various angles. Imagine holding a camera out at arm's length yourself, taking "selfies". As you move your arm you'll be taking photos of areas from one angle that can't be seen from another angle. So once you've got all the photos you then need to go in and erase your arm from the main photo, and copy/paste in pieces from photos taken to either side of that one, as well as above and below it. You layer all these pieces together and trim and rotate and stretch the pieces until they line up and fit into the main photo.

I suppose they could have included the arm that took the picture by patching in a piece taken here on Earth before Curiosity left for Mars, but they didn't. Here's a quote from the image's catalog page at NASA: "The rover's robotic arm is not visible in the mosaic because the MAHLI [Mars Hand Lens Imager] that took this mosaic is on the turret at the end of the arm. Wrist motions and turret rotations on the arm allowed MAHLI to acquire the mosaic's 55 images."

If it turns out that the tax paying public likes these sort of images, a future mission could carry an independant camera on a tripod, which it could set up and leave for a while. The rover could move around in its field of view doing the science work, then go back, pick up the camera and move to another location. Nature photographers do this all the time.

Rob

Re: APOD: Curiosity Rover at Rocknest on Mars (2012 Dec 27)

by orin stepanek » Thu Dec 27, 2012 1:26 pm

royalpalms6 wrote:How is Curiosty takeing photos of it's self?
I wondered as well until I read the explanation!
while digitally removing an extended arm.
I must say I really don't know how to digitally remove something from a photo; but professional photographers can do a lot with a photo! :wink:
Oh I almost forgot to show the kitty

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