Midnight Planets

There is so much data being sent to the Web from the rover missions that it's hard to get a handle on it all. Midnight Planets provides a variety of ways to track the rovers through the images they send us. My two favorite features: the rapid VR assembly of NavCam images and the ability to display stereo pairs as either red-blue anaglyphs or stereograms. The VR display is so cool, as it displays the rover's path; tapping on sol numbers lets you drive forward with the rover across the Martian terrain. The developer has been working on display of rover data since the MERs landed, and it shows.

As a student of astronomy and physics, also working with jpl I never could find a website that would allow me to skim through all the photos curiosity had taken. It's almost as if nasa cherry picked the photo's they wanted me to see, rather than share the experience of actually being there. This app finally takes me there. Kind of sad, but as new horizons heads for Pluto, I wish the photos would update like this app. Because I just know they are going to horde every photo until the make a press release of their finest images getting there.

If you enjoy closely studying surface images of Mars this is by far the best tool I’ve used. It lists the images by both location and sol but also will lay the photos out in a mosaic for each site with 360* of pan. This makes it possible to follow terrain and rock structures instantly into the site’s adjacent images. In addition its easy to follow the rovers path through each successive location on screen. Moving forward or back is done by clicking on screen markers in the image. Easy peasy. This is my go to app for a walk on Mars.

This app is absolutely the best way to view the photos being taken by the Mars rovers. It does a great job of placing the images into 3D virtual reality where one can move forward and backward daily in time to see what Curiosity Opportunity have seen while controlling which of the numerous cameras are being used.

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This app was fantastic, but it started showing only a single picture for each site. It was showing only one picture even when I selected sites with hundreds of pictures. Once I fixed this by switching between different filters. That apparently kicked it back into working mode. But a few days later it stopped working again. Clearing cached data didn’t help. I also suggest the developers add something on the Sites page reminding the user of his chosen filter and its effect. There is lots of room on the Sites page under each site to add more information.