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Bruce Murray Space Image Library

Spirit "Lookout" Panorama, sols 410-413

Spirit "Lookout" Panorama, sols 410-413
Spirit "Lookout" Panorama, sols 410-413 This is the Spirit Pancam "Lookout" panorama, acquired on sols 410 to 413 (27 Feb to 2 Mar 2005) from a position known informally as "Larry's Lookout" along the drive up Husband Hill. The summit of Husband Hill is the far peak near the center of this panorama and is about 200 meters away from the rover and about 45 meters higher in elevation. The bright rocky outcrop in the near field near the center of the panorama is part of the Cumberland Ridge, and beyond that and to the left is the Tennessee Valley. NASA / JPL-Caltech / Cornell

The panorama spans 360 degrees and consists of images obtained in 108 individual pointings and 5 Pancam filters at each pointing. This mosaic is an approximate true color rendering generated using the images acquired through Pancam's 750, 530, and 480 nm filters. The lighting varied considerably during the four sols that it took to acquire this image (partly because of imaging at different times of sol, but also partly because of small sol-to-sol variations in the dustiness of the atmosphere), resulting in some obvious image seams or rock shadow variations within the mosaic. These seams have been smoothed out from the sky parts of the mosaic in order to simulate better the vista that a person would have if they were viewing it all at the same time on Mars. However, it is often not possible or practical to smooth out such seams for regions of rock, soil, rover tracks, or solar panels. Such is the nature of acquiring and assembling large Pancam panoramas from the rovers.

Spirit's tracks leading back from the West Spur region can be seen on the right side of the panorama. The region just beyond the area where the tracks made their last zig-zag is the area known as "Paso Robles", where Spirit discovered rock and soil deposits with very high sulfur abundances. After acquiring this mosaic (which took several weeks to fully downlink and then several more weeks to process), Spirit drove around the Cumberland Ridge rocks seen here and is now driving up the flanks of Husband Hill, heading towards the summit.