Categories: Astronomy

Fly Over the Columbia Hills at APOD

If you haven’t yet discovered Astronomy Picture of the Day, its an absolutely wonderful site that provides a different image every day of our universe, with explanations written by two professional astronomers, Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell. Today’s APOD post is not a picture, however, but a movie. Combining data taken from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Mars Rover Spirit, Doug Ellison from UnmannedSpaceflight.com created a movie that simulates a fly-over of the Columbia Hills region on Mars. Of course, the Hills were named in memory of the astronauts who died in the Columbia space shuttle accident in February 2003.

In the movie you see the rippled sand on the sides of the Hills, the peak on Husband Hill where Spirit triumphantly climbed and surveyed the amazing view, and a white-colored area back on lower ground called Home Plate that Spirit has been studying for a couple of months now. Spirit herself makes a cameo in the video, too. It’s just great fun to watch.

Well, instead just reading about it, go visit APOD to watch the movie. And stay and browse awhile: APOD boasts the largest collection of annotated astronomical images on the internet.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/