Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Mars panorama

Mars panorama

 * Reason:Short version: a panorama of Mars.

Long version:

In late November 2005 while descending "Husband Hill," NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit took the most detailed panorama so far of the "Inner Basin," the rover's next target destination. Spirit acquired the 405 individual images that make up this 360-degree view of the surrounding terrain using five different filters on the panoramic camera. The rover took the images on Martian days, or sols, 672 to 677 (Nov. 23 to 28, 2005 -- the Thanksgiving holiday weekend).

This image is an approximately true-color rendering using camera's 750-, 530-, and 430-nanometer filters. Seams between individual frames have been eliminated from the sky portion of the mosaic to better simulate the vista a person standing on Mars would see.

"Home Plate," a bright, semi-circular feature scientists hope to investigate, is harder to discern in this image than in earlier views taken from higher up the hill. Spirit acquired this more oblique view, known as the "Seminole panorama," from about halfway down the south flank of Husband Hill, 50 meters (164 feet) or so below the summit. Near the center of the panorama, on the horizon, are "McCool Hill" and "Ramon Hill," named, like Husband Hill, in honor of the fallen astronauts of the space shuttle Columbia. Husband Hill is visible behind the rover, on the right and left sides of the panorama. An arc of rover tracks made while avoiding obstacles and getting into position to examine rock outcrops can be traced over a long distance by zooming in to explore the panorama in greater detail.

Spirit is now significantly farther downhill toward the center of this panorama, en route to Home Plate and other enigmatic soils and outcrop rocks in the quest to uncover the history of Gusev Crater and the "Columbia Hills."

This is an altered version of Image:MarsPanorama.jpg, stitching problems fixed and cropped.


 * Articles this image appears in:Mars rover, Spirit Rover
 * Creator:NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory


 * Support as nominator Durova Charge! 07:12, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Support per nom. Medrano man (talk) 10:26, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Support Top enc, and yes, this panorama is large enough! ;-) (Seriously, should we have a separate px requirement for panoramas, i.e. a minimum height?) --Janke | Talk
 * Support Stunning image, lots of encyclopaedic value, 10,000 pixels wide, don't see any problems here. Guest9999 (talk) 12:30, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Support One of the finest panoramas I've seen. And one of the biggest images I've seen on Wikipedia, but that's neither here nor there. (What's the biggest picture used on Wiki, anyway?) Dr. Extreme (talk) 15:10, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Support--Mbz1 (talk) 16:44, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Support --ErgoSum88 (talk) 19:50, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Support It's another planet! Xilliah (talk) 10:13, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Support Wow...--HereToHelp (talk to me) 18:40, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Support Per all.--CPacker (talk) 03:54, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Strong Support This is simply one of the most extraordinary (think of all that went into this for you and wikipedia visitors to see it) photo's taken by man--even if it was taken by a fool robot! --Mike Spenard (talk) 06:34, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Conditional Strong Support - It is stated that "stitching problems fixed and cropped", this is incorrect as I can still see where images have been stitched together, especially around the center of the image and to the right of the center of the image. If this article has been nominated purely because it's stitching problems have been fixed, then I would strongly differ on this point.  Even so it might be nice to iron out some more of the stitching problems before it is made a featured picture (as I think ultimately it should be made a featured picture).  On another note, as this is a 360 degree panorama, has anyone checked that the edges meet up correctly? --Dave (talk) 21:29, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I doubt that this is a 360 degree panorama; it was taken during the descent from a hill. The modifications to the stitching were not the sole reason for nominating, and were not intended to eliminate every possible issue that would be visible to a skilled eye.  Some of the seams on the original were quite obvious, though, and didn't quite match in either the lineup or the lighting.  So I made basic modifications that eliminated sharp diagonal lines while being minimally intrusive.  Durova Charge! 22:08, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for clearing this up, the only reason I thought it was a 360-degree view was in the description, it states: "Spirit acquired the 405 individual images that make up this 360-degree view", thanks for the reply I still suport this article to be a Featured Picture —Preceding unsigned comment added by Trombodave (talk • contribs) 16:48, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I just checked. It is 360 degrees, and the opposite edges line up perfectly.  Djk3 (talk) 03:37, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for checking this--Dave (talk) 19:54, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Support Wonderful. Djk3 (talk) 03:37, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

MER-C 02:34, 8 March 2008 (UTC)