New York, Jan 28: A unique panoramic image of US
President Barack Obama's inaugural address is being captured with the help of NASA's technology which will allow the viewers to see highly detailed view of the moment.
At first glance, the picture -- a combination of 220
images with an overall size of 1,474 megapixels-- looks like a
panoramic view of the audience. But the viewer can zoom in on
various areas of the image and each click reveals more details
of the area selected and allowing them to see clearly the face
of spectator and what exactly he or she was doing at that
particular moment.
Photographer, David Bergman used the Gigapan camera
system to generate this image from a press platform.
The Gigapan camera system is a NASA spinoff technology
also used in Mars exploration rovers and can capture thousands
of digital images and weave them into a uniform
high-resolution picture of more than a billion pixels.
The technology is based on the panoramic camera system
that the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity is being used to
explore the Red Planet for more than five years.
The Gigapan system was developed through a two-year
collaboration between NASA and Carnegie Mellon University.
"If you wish to explore a Martian landscape without
leaving your armchair, a few simple clicks around the NASA Web
site will lead you to panoramic photographs taken from the
Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity," the space
agency said.
"Many of the technologies that enable this spectacular
Mars photography have also inspired advancements in
photography here on Earth, including the panoramic camera
(Pancam) and its housing assembly, designed by the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory and Cornell University for the Mars
missions," it added.
Mounted at the top each rover, the Pancam mast assembly
(PMA) can tilt a full 180 degrees and swivel 360 degrees,
allowing for a complete, highly detailed view of the Martian
landscape.
The rover Pancams take small, 1 megapixel (1 million
pixel) digital photographs, which are stitched together into
large panoramas that sometimes measure 4 by 24 megapixels.
The Pancam software also performs some image correction
and after stitching, the photographs are transmitted back to
Earth, NASA said, adding that different lens filters and a
spectrometer also assist scientists in their analyses of
infrared radiation from the objects in the photographs.
These photographs from Mars spurred developers to begin
thinking in terms of larger and higher quality images --
super-sized digital pictures, or gigapixels-- composed of 1
billion or more pixels.
These images are more than 200 times the size captured by
today's standard 4 megapixel digital camera.
Originally created for the Mars missions, the detail
provided by these large photographs solves many purposes, not
only limited to extraterrestrial photography.
Bureau Report
First Published: Wednesday, January 28, 2009, 00:00