Stop What You’re Doing and Look at This Billion-Pixel Panorama of Mars

No, seriously, check it out. This is the first gigapixel image produced from almost 900 images snapped by the Curiosity Rover, and all billion-plus pixels of it are totally amazing. The clarity with which you can see the rocky landscape of the Red Planet, looking south from the it’s perch at the so-called Rock Nest, is unmatched by any images we’ve seen. It’s like being there. You can almost feel the Martian wind blowing crimson sand past you. You can see the amazing panorama courtesy of NASA right here, along with the option to view the image on a cylinder, look at raw and color-corrected versions, and of course zoom in to get a better look at the details of what certainly seems like every rock on the planet.

Whatever you do with the rest of your day, though, just make this is part of it, because we can’t really do it justice here and it’s something you should see. You can also download the image for posterity, in either a 7.4 MB JPEG or 159 MB TIFF format. Our advice? Go big or go home.

(via JPL-NASA, image via NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

Meanwhile in related links

• Shame it didn’t get a better image of this giant penis inscribed on Mars
• NASA will send pictures of Mars directly to your phone, because we live in the future
• This panorama of Mount Sharp is pretty good, too