Phoenix Lander Provides a Great Panorama of Mars

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The video and the Quicktime movie link here show a fantastic panoramic view of how Mars really like including the excavated icy areas. NASA scientists have stitched the images to make it look like a real video provides great insight about the surface of Mars in the north polar region of Mars.

NASA website reports about the panorama:

The full-circle panorama in approximately true color shows the polygonal patterning of ground at the landing area, similar to patterns in permafrost areas on Earth. The center of the image is the westward part of the scene. Trenches where Phoenix's robotic arm has been exposing subsurface material are visible in the right half of the image. The spacecraft's meteorology mast, topped by the telltale wind gauge, extends into the sky portion of the panorama.

The panorama contains more than 100 distinct camera positions and images were captured with three different filters (to get a true color of the surroundings) at each position.

Here is the glimpse of the Panorama. See also the Quicktime movie link which has high resolution images.

Nasa.gov A panorama as seen from the Phoenix Lander image:42259:1::0

Click this link for a larger high resolution image.