A close-up look at Mount Sharp – canyon country!

A de-bayered verison of one of the new Mastcam images of the foothills of Mount Sharp. The bayering effect can still be
seen, but is now much less pronounced. Click image for larger version. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Damien Bouic

There are some new Mastcam images of Mount Sharp now posted on the Curiosity website (sol 17), showing the mesas and buttes in the foothills in a lot more detail. The amount of layering is amazing, a geologist’s dream, and they really do look a lot like the terrain in the southwestern United States. They are still several kilometres away at this point, but as the rover gets closer and actually starts to drive between some of them and see some of the canyons as well, the views will be even better!

The raw images, unfortunately, are often heavily bayered (the mosaic pattern of small squares covering the photos); they are displayed “as is” and haven’t been processed to remove the bayering effect yet. There’s a good explanation about this here. But again, other imaging experts out there have been cleaning up the images themselves as best they can, until more official high-resolution versions are released. The image above is another one from Damien Bouic, showing a de-bayered version of one of the new images. Original post here (French).