The natural world. Looking pretty for 3.5b years.

Same Crater, Different Views

Author: Hugh Bollinger/Wednesday, January 8, 2014/Categories: natural history, photography

JPL's Opportunity rover landed on Mars in January 2004. Its expected life-time was 3 months but it is still rolling around taking measurements and snapping cool photos. Currently, Opportunity is sitting by an outcrop on the rim of Endeavour Crater where the robot captured images of the same location using different camera filters.

Our eyes see the world in visible light but other wavelengths produce different information: infrared can see temperature variability while ultraviolet shows strange patterns that insect eyes easily detect. The JPL team used camera filters to emphasize the variation in the materials on the Mars surface.