I just came across two little gems that IMO deserve a thread of its own, especially if you really want to enjoy the brillant, pristine imagery that's
been sent down from Mars by Perseverance Rover over the last couple of days.
The first is a breathtaking 4K video that's been masterfully crafted including the latest
hi-res photos acquired by the rover's Zoom-cameras. Add in an excellent, atmospheric soundtrack and you've got the next best thing to actually being
on Mars yourself. Words can't really describe this experience, one has to see it to believe it:
The second gem I was referring to above is a
beautifully rendered panorama of the
rover's landing site, presented as a seamless 360° experience. The sky has been added and therefore isn't the original Martian sky but the rest is
the real deal.
It really is a lot of fun to just pan around that scene in fullscreen mode (clicking on the image below will take you straight to the "Creator Up!"
website with the 360° panorama, you just need to click the icon for fullscreen mode in the top right corner):
Being quite familiar with image editing myself, I know that the creators of the above work must have invested lots of time and effort including hours
of editing, optimizing and testing in order to achieve these results, it's really amazing and I'm grateful they decided to share their marvelous
work.
Mars Exploration has never been as impressive as it is today and I do hope that you'll enjoy these Martian sceneries just as much as I did!
originally posted by: Middleoftheroad
Is everyone excited because they finally quit putting $5 cameras on billion dollar rovers?
Those cameras are exposed to absolutely extreme conditions, eg. radiation in space and that on the surface of Mars. Usual stock items won't get them
very far and off-the-shelf "high-end" cameras that malfunction 5 minutes after touching down would be a huge disappointment.
That said, I think the excitement is absolutely justified!
It's actually a really difficult place to fly a helicopter, because the atmosphere is alot thinner than here on Earth. That being said, they found a
way!
For those interested in exploring the Jezero Crater view from Percy's 4th day on Mars incl. zooming functionality, there's now an interactive panorama
available on GigaMacro (click on image
below to go directly to the panorama on that site):
It contains basically the same hi-res Mastcam-Z imagery that's in the video "This is Mars in 4K
UHD", but let's you explore the area more freely by panning around and zooming in and out.