Why Do the Mars Rover's Images Look So Bad? [Curiosity]
A lot of people are wondering why the first color image from the Mars Curiosity Rover looks so murky. Or why the black and white pictures look so low-resolution and out of focus in some areas. Calm yourselves. They will look absolutely amazing soon, perfect and in high-def. There's many good reasons why they look bad now. Today's image—Curiosity's first color snap—was taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), which, though clearly capable of photographing the horizon, is really designed to take close up pictures of martian rocks and soil. MAHLI is part of a Swiss-army-ish gadget arm that has five more instruments. Its color sensor is 1,600 by 1,200 pixels in size—just a 2-megapixel camera. More than enough to take close-ups of the objects that may get drilled by the other gadgets in the arm. Two megapixels is not that bad. In fact, it can capture plenty of detail, as the crop below clearly shows. So why does the image look hazy and murky? Two words: dust cap. All the cam...