This newly released panoramic image of Mount Sharp located in Mars’ Gale Crater can provide valuable information to NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for further aspects of the Curiosity Rover Mission, but it also kind of looks like Luke Skywalker’s home planet of Tatooine from Star Wars, so let’s just focus on that.
First, here’s the full panorma in all its long and skinny glory:
And here is a shot of the double sunset on Tatooine from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope:
Alright. I’ll admit it’s not a one to one correlation, and pretty much any desert photo will make me think of Tatooine, but I don’t think anyone can look at the picture of Mount Sharp and not picture a landspeeder cruising down to the Tosche Station to pick up some power converters.
It might also be due to the fact that the above picture of Mount Sharp has gone through some color correction before being released. This is the image without the color correction:
Yeah, that looks more like plain old Mars to me for some reason. Mount Sharp is the next destination for the Curiosity Rover after it’s done analyzing things in the “Yellowknife Bay” area of the Gale Crater, where it discovered evidence that ancient mars could have supported microbial life.
(via NASA, images via NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS and Lucasfilm)
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