Carl Sagan Viking dust panorama

Filed under pretty pictures, amateur image processing, Mars, NASA Mars missions before 1996

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This Viking 1 Lander panoramic photo was taken because Carl Sagan was curious to see what the Martian landscape looked like at dusk. It was taken on Sols 163 and 164 (January 4 and 5, 1977) around 17:30 local solar time.

NASA / JPL / 2013

The original image was acquired in panchromatic mode -- that is, in black-and-white. It was processed and then colorized using the real colors retrieved from other images taken at sunset.

Olivier de Goursac shares this image as a tribute to Carl Sagan and to the Planetary Society.

Copyright holder: Olivier de Goursac

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Contact us to request publication permission from the copyright holder. Original image data dated on or about January 5, 1977