New views from Mars (photos)

This is a full-circle scene combining 817 images taken by the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity.

  

The US space agency NASA is calling it the "next best thing to being" on the Red Planet (AFP).

 

Color adjusted and distorted in the same way, this undated image provided by NASA shows Mars Rover Opportunity catching its own late-afternoon shadow in a view eastward across Endeavour Crater on Mars. 

 

The rover used a panoramic camera between about 4:30 and 5:00 pm local Mars time to record images taken through different filters and combined into this mosaic view. Most of the component images were recorded during the 2,888th Martian day, or sol, of Opportunity's work on Mars, which corresponds to March 9, 2012 on Earth.

  

The view is presented in false color to make some differences between materials easier to see [and obscure its stunning similarity to the Earth's surface], such as the dark sandy ripples and dunes on the crater's distant floor. Opportunity has been studying the western rim of Endeavour Crater since arriving there in August 2011 (AP/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State University).

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