Panorama of "Santa Maria" Crater
Date: 19 Dec 2010

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity spent its seventh anniversary of its landing on Mars investigating a crater called "Santa Maria," which has a diameter of about the length of a football field.


This scene looks eastward across the crater. Portions of the rim of a much larger crater, Endurance, appear on the horizon. In the high-resolution version, the panorama spans 225 compass degrees, from north-northwest on the left to south-southwest on the right. The image has been assembled from multiple frames taken by the panoramic camera (Pancam) on Opportunity during the 2,453rd and 2,454th Martian days, or sols, of the rover's work on Mars (18 and 19 Dec. 2010).


The view is presented in false color to emphasize differences among materials in the rocks and the soils. It combines images taken through three different Pancam filters admitting light with wavelengths centered at 753 nm (near infrared), 535 nm (green) and 432 nm (violet). Seams have been eliminated from the sky portion of the mosaic to better simulate the vista a person would see if they were standing on Mars.


Last Update: 23 Nov 2011 (AMB)

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/ASU