This mosaic of images from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit shows a
panorama of the "Columbia Hills" without any adjustment for rover tilt.
When viewed through 3-D glasses, depth is much more dramatic and easier
to see, compared with a tilt-adjusted version. This is because stereo
views are created by producing two images, one corresponding to the view
from the panoramic camera's left-eye camera, the other corresponding to
the view from the panoramic camera's right-eye camera. The brain processes
the visual input more accurately when the two images do not have any
vertical offset. In this view, the vertical alignment is nearly perfect,
but the horizon appears to curve because of the rover's tilt (because the
rover was parked on a steep slope, it was tilted approximately 22 degrees
to the west-northwest). Spirit took the images for this 360-degree
panorama while en route to higher ground in the "Columbia Hills."
The highest point visible in the hills is "Husband Hill," named for space
shuttle Columbia Commander Rick Husband. To the right are the rover's
tracks through the soil, where it stopped to perform maintenance on its
right front wheel in July. In the distance, below the hills, is the floor
of Gusev Crater, where Spirit landed Jan. 3, 2004, before traveling more
than 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) to reach this point. This vista comprises
188 images taken by Spirit's panoramic camera from its 213th day, or sol,
on Mars to its 223rd sol (Aug. 9 to 19, 2004). Team members at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory and Cornell University spent several weeks
processing images and producing geometric maps to stitch all the images
together in this mosaic. The 360-degree view is presented in a
cylindrical-perspective map projection with geometric seam correction.