Bruce Murray Space Image Library

Lengthening shadows at Endeavour Crater

Lengthening shadows at Endeavour Crater
Lengthening shadows at Endeavour Crater Three NAVCAM views made by the Opportunity rover at Sol 4911 were the basis of this panoramic view of the shadows beginning to fill Endeavour crater. NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Don Davis

When checking the latest NAVCAM raw image frames from the Opportunity rover, I noticed three stereo pairs made during its Sol 4911, looking across the 22 km wide Endeavour crater as the last sunlight was leaving the nearby inner slopes. This is rather rare lighting for rover photos so I decided to try to get the most out of this dramatic scene, filling in parts of the view not captured on that occasion with photos made in the days and weeks before showing the distant horizon. I then used earlier color images of the distant scene for reference while hand coloring the panorama. The sky was manually painted in Photoshop, which was also the compositing software used to merge the various views.