The Rover Curiosity has just published a sublime image of Mars. This panorama is enough to make us want to visit the Red Planet as soon as possible.
The conquest of Mars is on the program. But it’s neither tomorrow nor the day after that the average person will be able to set foot on the Red Planet. While waiting for the first astronauts to settle, orbiters scan its surface while Rovers criss-cross some of its craters, searching for ancient traces of extraterrestrial life. Among these Rovers, there is in particular Curiosity, which regularly shares images of Martian landscapes with us. And his latest shot takes us on a journey.
The Rover Curiosity, this genius photographer
Curiosity is a real twitto. This robot, which has a selfie taken on Mars as a profile pic, regularly taunts us with its photos, which it posts frequently on Elon Musk’s social network.
Of course, this gives the most whimsical Internet users the opportunity to overinterpret any of his shots. We remember, for example, the story of the “alien door”, which set the Web on fire, or that of the “book” found on the Red Planet.
But today, it’s not about alien civilizations or literature. The Curiosity photo is just…pretty.
A panorama taken at two different times
The photo taken by Curiosity is a panorama, which has a small peculiarity: it is in fact a montage of two photos dated April 8, one taken in the morning at 9:20 a.m., the other in the afternoon at 3:40. The blue side represents morning, while the yellow side represents afternoon.
But why take such a shot? Mainly for aesthetic reasons, as NASA engineer Doug Ellison points out:
“Anyone who has ever been to a national park knows that the scenery is not the same in the morning as it is in the afternoon. (…) Shooting at two times of the day produces dark shadows because the lighting comes from the left and the right, like on a stage – but instead of stage lights, we rely on SamaGame.”
