by Mike Howard
The goal of Midnight Planets is to combine images, data and text to create a sort of virtual park which you can explore, with placards pointing out areas of interest. The view is through the eyes of the Mars Rovers Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity. Eventually, I hope to integrate some of the work I've already done with the apps Mars Globe and Moon Globe, and expand on that.
What currently makes this project unique is the approach of providing access to all of the Mars Rover images and locations, in a way that puts them into context and allows people to explore. In other words, this is not a collection of hand-stitched panoramas; the goal is to, in the language of the Internet, show all the things. Ideally, I'd also like to provide a sort of guidebook, and a thorough index of surface features; but that is a big goal, a very big goal. At the moment, Midnight Planets allows you to view nearly every image returned by Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity, and to visit every location visited by those intrepid explorers, but the accompanying text is an ongoing project. So please keep that in mind as you explore.
A couple other things to be aware of:
So again, the take-away message: Midnight Planets is not like a book who's content is set, but more like a crazy Internet book that will always be changing and improving, I hope. But it does allow you to explore a whole other world that we cannot get to in person today. So I hope you enjoy it.