Super Resolution View of “Mini-Matterhorn”

The "Mini Matterhorn" is a 3/4 meter rock immediately east-southeast of the Mars Pathfinder lander. This image, along with PIA00816 and PIA00818, shows how super resolution techniques can be applied to nearfield targets to help to address questions about the texture of the rocks at the landing site and what it might tell us about their modes of origin. PIA00816 shows a "raw," standard-resolution color frame of the rock. This image and PIA00818 were produced by combining the "Super pan" frames from the IMP camera. The composite color frame consists of 7 frames from the right eye, taken with different color filters that were enlarged by 500% and then co-added using Adobe Photoshop to produce, in effect, a super-resolution panchromatic frame that is sharper than an individual frame would be. This panchromatic frame was then colorized with the red, green, and blue filtered images from the same sequence. The color balance was adjusted to approximate the true color of Mars.

Mars Pathfinder is the second in NASA's Discovery program of low-cost spacecraft with highly focused science goals. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, developed and manages the Mars Pathfinder mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

Photojournal note: Sojourner spent 83 days of a planned seven-day mission exploring the Martian terrain, acquiring images, and taking chemical, atmospheric and other measurements. The final data transmission received from Pathfinder was at 10:23 UTC on September 27, 1997. Although mission managers tried to restore full communications during the following five months, the successful mission was terminated on March 10, 1998.