Gibson Panorama

         The Spirit Pancam cameras acquired the "Gibson" panorama on sols 748-751 (Feb. 9-12, 2006), when Spirit was parked on the edge of "Home Plate." The panorama provides the team a high-resolution view of the intricately layered exposures of rock at the edge of the bright, semi-circular "Home Plate" feature. Rocks near the rover include Barnhill, Rogan, and Mackey. The rover was perched at a 27 degree upward tilt while this panorama was taken, resulting in the "U" shape of the mosaic. In reality, the features along the ~1-2 m vertical exposure of the Home Plate rim in this vicinity are relatively level.

         The panorama consists of 246 separate images in 6 different Pancam filters, and covers 160 degrees of terrain around the rover. The first image is an approximate true color rendering using Pancam's 753nm, 535nm, and 432nm filters. Image-to-image seams have been eliminated from the sky portion of the mosaic to better simulate the vista a person standing on Mars would see. The second image is a false color rendering using the same filters, but presented to enhance the many striking but subtle color differences between rocks and soils in the scene.

Jim Bell
Pancam Instrument Lead
March 1, 2006