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PIA23971: Curiosity Captures a Spaghetti Western Landscape on Mars
 Target Name:  Mars
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Mars Science Laboratory (MSL)
 Spacecraft:  Curiosity
 Instrument:  Mastcam
 Product Size:  4128 x 423 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  JPL
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA23971.tif (4.337 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA23971.jpg (372.4 kB)

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Original Caption Released with Image:

Photojournal Note: Also available is the original source, high resolution PNG file, PIA23971_hires.png (41276 x 4228 pixels, 310 MB). This file may be too large to view from a browser; it can be downloaded onto your desktop by right-clicking on the previous link and viewed with image viewing software.


This wide panorama was taken by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on Dec. 19, 2019, the 2,620th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. On the righthand foreground is Western Butte; the ridge with a crusty cap in the background is the Greenheugh pediment, which Curiosity ascended in March of 2020.

The rover's Mast Camera, or Mastcam, used its telephoto lens to produce the panorama, which includes 130 individual images stitched together. The panorama has been white-balanced so that the colors of the rock materials resemble how they would appear under daytime lighting conditions on Earth.

Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego built and operates Mastcam. A division of Caltech, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the Mars Science Laboratory mission for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington and built the Curiosity rover.

For more information about Curiosity, visit http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl or https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Image Addition Date:
2020-08-03