Click on the image for 'Cahokia' Panorama (QTVR)
This stunning image mosaic of the "Columbia Hills" is the first 360-degree
panorama taken since the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit arrived at the
hills over a month ago. The rover has been busy studying the rocks here,
which show evidence of past alteration by water. The dark patch of soil
to the right is the spot where Spirit stopped for engineering work on its
right front wheel. Spirit's tracks can be followed from there all the way
back to "Bonneville Crater" and the original landing site, more than 3
kilometers (1.86 miles) away.
This approximate true-color image, nicknamed the "Cahokia panorama"
after the Native American archaeological site near St. Louis, was acquired
between sols 213 to 223 (Aug. 9 to 19, 2004). The panorama consists of
470 images acquired through six panoramic camera filters (750 to 480
nanometers). It took until the week of sol 237 (Sept. 2) to downlink all
the data back to Earth. Several more weeks of image processing and
geometric mapping by team members at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,
Calif., and Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., were required to stitch all the images
together into this spectacular mosaic.
