Category Archives: Photography

Ultra HD ‘footage’ of Mars created by panning (using the Ken Burns effect) across high definition panoramas composed of stills taken by various Mars rovers. It’s not video but it’s very engaging.

Full screen for best effect and, if you’ve turned down the volume, ElderFoxDocumentaries sez:

Although the cameras are high quality, the rate at which the rovers can send data back to earth is the biggest challenge. Curiosity can only send data directly back to earth at 32 kilo-bits per second. Instead, when the rover can connect to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, we get more favourable speeds of 2 Megabytes per second. However, this link is only available for about 8 minutes each Sol, or Martian day. As you would expect, sending HD video at these speeds would take a long long time. As nothing really moves on Mars, it makes more sense to take and send back images.

kottke

A serene image captured last month at Dover, Nova Scotia. To wit:

The Old Astronomer’s Milky Way arcs through this peaceful northern sky. Against faint, diffuse starlight you can follow dark rifts of interstellar dust clouds stretching from the galaxy’s core. They lead toward bright star Antares at the right, almost due south above the horizon. The brightest beacon in the twilight is Jupiter, though. From the camera’s perspective it seems to hang from the limb of a tree framing the foreground, an apple tree of course.

(Image: Kristine Richer)

apod