Curiosity Snaps Gorgeous Panorama of the Strange Shaler Rock Formation

Curiosity has been on the move for a few days now, heading towards the Yellowknife Bay region, where it will get to test its rock drill for the first time. On its way though, it stopped at a couple of interesting places and, you guessed it, snapped some more photos.

One of the more interesting places Curiosity visited is the Shaler rock outcrop. The location makes for some very interesting photos and the rover didn't waste the opportunity snapping plenty of pics with both its Mastcam, the main camera for this type of photos, and the Navcam which is normally used for navigation.

These cameras can only focus on a relatively small portion of the landscape, so several photos are used to create a panoramic view.

This inherently leads to some distortion, but the panoramic views end up being breathtaking nonetheless. NASA put together the 3D panorama you see below, the one above is stitched together from Navcam photos.