NASA shows largest Mars panorama yet made by Curiosity

Mars rover Curiosity has captured a panoramic photo that consists of 1.8 billion pixels. The panorama of the red planet is made up of twelve hundred photos taken over four days.

Curiosity took the photos between November 24 and December 1, 2019. In the months that followed, the photos were merged into panoramas. The largest panorama contains 1.8 billion pixels and was taken with the telephoto lens of the Mastcam. A smaller version has also been created with a total of 650 million pixels, combining images from the telephoto lens with images from a wide-angle camera, so that the Mars rover itself can also be better viewed. That panorama also consists of more than a thousand photos.

Space agency NASA makes the file available in high resolution on its website. The panorama is offered as tif and is then 2.43GB in size. If you want to view the image in all its glory, you must be patient, because the download speed is very limited. NASA also publishes smaller jpg versions and has made a video zooming in on the details.

Update: The full panorama photo is 88,797 by 22,958 pixels. For those who do not have the patience to download the large file, but are curious about the level of detail: the gallery below shows a number of excerpts of the panorama at true pixel size.