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February
2, 2009: When a new president is inaugurated, it's
a big event, and it calls for a big picture.
To
be precise, 1,474 megapixels.
Using
the same NASA technology that Mars rovers routinely use to
image the Red Planet, photographer David Bergman created an
unprecedented 1,474 megapixel panoramic photo of President
Obama's inauguration. (For comparison, an ordinary digital
photo contains less than 10 megapixels.) Click on the image
below to pan around the rotunda and zoom in on some of the
two million people. The detail is amazing. You can see Hilary
Clinton's white earrings, Barbara Bush's fuzzy black earmuffs,
the word "Obama" stitched on spectators' winter
hats, Yo-Yo Ma taking a picture with his iPhone, and much
more:
Click to view the interactive panorama
"Covering the inauguration of President Obama was one
of the biggest thrills of my life," says Bergman. "Little
did I know that it would be topped by the reaction to a photo
I made that day. …With the ability to zoom in and move around
the photo, it turned into an international game of 'Where's
Waldo?' In the first 5 days, the image was viewed by millions
of people in 186 countries."
He
created the image using Gigapan™, a camera system developed
based on NASA technology. Here's how it happened:
A
few years ago, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Cornell
University designed a special high-resolution camera called
"Pancam" for the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity.
Each of the twin rovers is equipped with a Pancam able to
tilt 180 degrees and rotate 360 degrees, so the robotic geologists
can snap photos in all directions. Special software stitches
individual 1-megapixel digital images together into a high-resolution
panorama and smooths out any anomalies.
 Right:
The Mars rovers' Pancam, shown here swiveling atop Opportunity's
stalk-like "neck," was the inspiration for GigaPan.
[Larger
image]
Because
the Pancams are mounted at eye level, viewing the final product
helps scientists "look around" Mars as though actually
hiking the desert-like terrain in their boots instead of via
computer screens. The resolution of the images lets the scientists
zoom in and scrutinize Martian rocks and other objects close
up, just as they would if they themselves were kicking around
in the dirt up there.
The
masterminds behind Gigapan were Randy Sargent at NASA's Ames
Research Center and Illah Nourbakhsh at Carnegie Mellon University.
The panoramic photographs of Mars sparked an idea in their
minds. It went something like this: "Let's learn to produce
even bigger and better photos -- digital pictures composed
of a billion or more pixels – and bring that technology back
to Earth." Sargent worked with Rich LeGrand of Charmed
Labs LLC to design and produce the Gigapan products.
A
Gigapan panorama is composed of many individual images taken
one at a time and stitched together to form a whole. The inauguration
photo contains 220 individual shots that required a total
of 15 minutes to take.
Right:
The Gigapan imager. [more]
 "I'm
really a traditional, still photographer," says Bergman.
"I had seen the Gigapan system but never used it. Up
until the day of the inauguration, I had no idea how to set
it up. I fiddled around with it for a while in the hotel room
to figure it out. That's a testament to how easy it is to
use."
The
biggest challenge, says Bergman, was getting through security:
"I had to be there at 6 in the morning and had to pass
through three capitol police security checkpoints. I didn't
have to face any Martian dust storms like the rovers do, but
it was bitterly cold, and the ceremony didn't start until
11:30 a.m. I had no room for a tripod, so I had to clamp the
Gigapan assembly to a rail and hope it worked."
It
worked like a charm.
Although
it is relatively new, Gigapan has already helped a lot of
people in a number of ways. For example, it was used to create
photographic overlays for Google Earth of areas affected by
natural disasters, enabling relief workers to pinpoint areas
in need of assistance in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina,
Hurricane Rita, and the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir. Botanists,
geologists, archeologists, and other scientists around the
world are using the technology to document diverse elements
of the Earth's cultures and ecosystems.
From
Earth to Mars and beyond, NASA technology is getting the big
picture. Now you can too.
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Author: Dauna Coulter
| Editor: Dr.
Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA
| more
information |
| Gigapan™
is a trademark of Carnegie Mellon University.
Special
thanks: Behind the scenes, Dave Lavery of the
Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters and
Renee Bouchard, US Senate photographer, provided training
and cut through red tape to make Bergman's photo shoot
possible.
Panoramas
in Motion:
"Panoramas
work best for landscape shots, where nothing is moving,"
notes Bergman. "So in that respect, the rovers
have the advantage over me. At least I hope nothing
is moving up there on Mars! Here on Earth, I was using
Gigapan to photograph 2 million fidgeting people."
Indeed,
there are a few amusing stitching errors: a pair of
legs with no torso, some floating hats, a disembodied
hand or two.
"But
there were only about a dozen flaws," says Bergman.
"That's amazing. A friend experienced with panoramic
photography helped me easily correct those few errors
to create the final print."
Web
links:
Mars
Cameras Make Panoramic Photography a Snap -- NASA
press release
David
Bergman's home page
NASA's
Future: US
Space Exploration Policy |
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