Last month, NASA’s Curiosity Rover captured a remarkable sight in the sky above Mars. It shot clear images of wispy cirrus clouds that look like those we have on Earth. While they’re common on our planet, they are very rare on the Red Planet, which is one of the things that make these images so important. What’s more, they reveal Mars’ distant past, when these clouds may have enabled the water to flow on the surface.
Now is Your Chance to Photograph All Five Visible Planets in One Shot
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Of all the planets found in the Solar System, only five of the brightest planets – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, can be seen with the naked eye.
While all five of these planets can be seen throughout most of the year, as of this morning they can all be seen simultaneously as they (mostly) align diagonally in the early morning sky.
Last time this happened was over a decade ago, so ready your cameras and plan your shots.
Cheeky Photo Series Shows What It’s Like To Be A Tourist On Mars
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We know a lot of you must be bummed about not being selected for a mission to Mars on SpaceX or Mars One, or, actually, maybe you’re just happy to see Mars right here from the comfort of earth. Either way, this fun photo series from Julien Mauve is exactly what you need. In Greetings From Mars, the photographer plays the tourist as he and a friend appear to be casually snapping selfies as they explore the Red Planet.[Read More…]
This Timelapse From Mars Shows Rover’s 42Km, 12 Years Journey
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Usually we share timelapses of the most beautiful places on earth, resolution goes up to 8K, and sound design is spectacular. This next movie however, was not shot on earth, sound is crap and resolution looks like something from the 80’s.
This 8 minutes timelapse documents NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover – Opportunity traveling 42.2 kilometers (a full marathon if you will), over roughly 12 years. The Rover started it journey on January 2004 and the footage goes up to 2014 (the rover is still going though).
The photos are not coming from a high-end camera, but rather from the hazard-avoidance cameras mounted on the little vehicle and used to…. avoid obstacles while zooming through. Those are “two B&W cameras with 120 degree field of view, that provide additional data about the rover’s surroundings“.
This Photo of a Sunset Was Captured By a Robot. On Mars.
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The Mars Curiosity Rover snapped this photo of a Martian sunset several weeks ago, on SOL 956 to be exact, and beamed it back to Earth.
Never mind the Rover’s impressive photographic skills, I still find it mind blowing that such a high-res image travelled 225,300,000 km and made it with all the pixels in the right order.
The photo was taken using the left Mastcam, one of several camera systems found on Curiosity.
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