Martian Vistas

At a press conference last night it was announced that Phoenix had been lost. As the days in the Martian Arctic get shorted with the onset of winter this was not unexpected. It's been a great mission, thanks Phoenix and all involved.

Here is the last image of the Martian surface taken.

And here is the very last image taken (one of a pair).

Not very dramatic, but as Mark Lemmon said on UMSF "those are a water vapor band/continuum pair, so Phoenix was following the water to the end."

Very fitting.

Here is the state of the ground within the work volume of Phoenix's robotic arm on sol 84 showing all the trenches made so far.

Full resolution (7112 x 2944) (3.8Mb)
Half resolution (3556 x 1472) (1.2Mb)
Quarter resolution (1778 x 736) (324kb)

On Sol 83 this pan was taken showing a very fine coating of frost on the ground. A sign of the approaching winter.

Full resolution (3117 x 2012) (1.4Mb)
Half resolution (1559 x 1006) (309kb)

Here is The Peter Pan transformed into polar coordinates.

Full resolution (7700 x 7700) (8.8Mb)
Half resolution (3850 x 3850) (2.7Mb)
Quarter resolution (1925 x 1925) (803kb)

Here is probably my final version of The Peter Pan, at full resolution touched up and with an artificial sky. There has been some interest in a version with the arm removed so that the whole horizon is visible. I may do this at some point but I'm done for now!

EDIT - Polar (fish-eye) image here

Full resolution (26720 x 6677) (24.9Mb)
Half resolution (13360 x 3339) (8.1Mb)
Quarter resolution (6680 x 1670) (1.9Mb)
One eighth resolution (3340 x 835) (574kb)

My processing software was never really designed to do deck pans so I still have quite a bit of work to do on this to get it looking good. Nevertheless it's been a long time since I put out a colour version and the completed view is too good to keep to myself. So here is my latest test version:

EDIT - Replaced with an improved version

EDIT2 - New high resolution version here

EDIT3 - Polar (fish-eye) image here

10000 x 2499 version (4.7Mb)
5000 x 1250 version (1.0Mb)

I think that the colour version of the full Peter Pan with spacecraft deck will be quite tricky. So in the meantime here is virtually the whole panorama in greyscale.

Quarter Resolution (6680 x 1744) (4.4Mb)




Polar version



Quarter Resolution (1686 x 1686) (960kb)

Here is another go at the mission success panorama 'Peter Pan'. The foreground is still being filled in, this image is already out of date as more images came down on sol 33. In this version I have also added in the mosaic taken of the robot arm work volume taken earlier (sols 3 - 7), unfortunately they don't quite overlap so there is a black line across the middle. Now with a version at the full resolution of the camera.

Full Resolution (26584 x 6868) (19.2Mb)
Half Resolution (13292 x 3434) (4.3Mb)
Quarter Resolution (6646 x 1717) (1.2Mb)

The Mission success panorama 'Peter Pan' now covers the full 360 degrees around the horizon. The foreground has also started to be filled in. In this version I have also added in the mosaic taken of the robot arm work volume taken earlier (sols 3 - 7), unfortunately they don't quite overlap. Processing the full size version is tough on my computer so it's only at half of this at this time.

Half Resolution (13236 x 2561) (3.8Mb)
Quarter Resolution (6618 x 1281) (873kb)

The horizon as seen from Phoenix stretched vertically ten times to bring out relief on the horizon.

Full Resolution (24621 x 2880) (5.0Mb)
Half Resolution (12311 x 1440) (1.4Mb)
Quarter Resolution (6156 x 720) (389kb)