Spirit Self-Portrait

This bird's-eye view combines a self-portrait of the spacecraft deck and a panoramic mosaic of the Martian surface as viewed by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit. The rover's solar panels are still gleaming in the sunlight, having acquired only a thin veneer of dust two years after the rover landed and began exploring the red planet. Spirit captured this 360-degree panorama on the summit of "Husband Hill" inside Mars' Gusev Crater. During the period from Spirit's Martian days, or sols, 583 to 586 (Aug. 24-27, 2005), the rover's panoramic camera acquired the hundreds of individual frames for this, its largest ever panorama image.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell

DC

Worth listening too...

Smithsonian Air & Space Museum

I keep forgetting to bring a good camera with me... We had some time today and stopped by the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

Photos:

Video:

My Ride

Check out the truck/car/van/...somthing that is my rental.

It's basically a station wagon on crack.  The guy at the rental counter gave me a free upgrade from car, standard, boring, 1 ea. to this. Sweet...

The hotel isn't bad either.

...it could be worse...

New Project

After cleaning out the last remnants of the wet photo lab, I happened across three drawers full of negatives from the '50's, '60's, and '70's. Some appear to have been taken by a military photographer (musters and armories) and some seem to focus on governors (press conferences and gala events).

Anyone have a scanner and a lot of free time?

Recipe for Moral +3

Feeling down? Need a little boost to get the day moving again? Try this century old recipe.

1  Camera
2  Marines

Apply boredom generously and let stand for one hour.

Full Recovery...

As most of you know I returned home a few days ago with all fingers and toes accounted for. For me, the trip was hard work followed by hard play which evened out to be fun. The host family we stayed with was very nice. Though we had been warned, "Well, you won't go hungry, but the food is..ehh." I found that to be far from the truth. While the repetitive sandwich disorder that we suffered from on occasion was a bit boring, the reindeer stew, moose sausage and sursei (pickled herring) was quite good. I would also recommend the brunoste. I brought a bit back if anyone one wants to be daring. You like Leverpostei? He does...

We left quite a bit behind schedule. And by "a bit" I mean thirteen hours. The flight, originally slated for noonish, was pushed back to 0300 the next morning leaving us with enough time to watch everyone else's DVDs a few times over. It's true, Rush Hour 3 gets exponentially less funny the second and third time.

The uneventful flight took us through no cell phone signal, middle of nowhere, Labrador, Canada. I had originally planned to stay awake until the flight, sleep the entire trip and be well rested for the day of arrival, maybe even showing up at work. Not so much. After sticking to the plan, I slept another six hours at home and ten more that night.