Jan. 27, 2009 Sonja Alexander Headquarters, Washington 202-358-1761 sonja.r.alexander@xxxxxxxx MEDIA ADVISORY: M09-019 NASA-DERIVED TECHNOLOGY CAPTURES UNIQUE INAUGURAL IMAGE WASHINGTON -- NASA spinoff technology from the Mars exploration rovers was used to capture a unique panoramic image of President Obama's inaugural address at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 20. A photographer at the inauguration, David Bergman, used the Gigapan camera system to generate an image from a press platform. The resulting picture is a combination of 220 images with an overall size of 1,474 megapixels. The Gigapan system is a NASA spinoff technology that can capture thousands of digital images and weave them into a uniform high-resolution picture of more than a billion pixels. The technology is the product of a two-year collaboration between NASA and Carnegie Mellon. The Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity have used the Gigapan system to explore the Red Planet for more than five years. To read a 2008 Spinoff story about the Gigapan technology, visit: http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/Spinoff2008/ch_2.html To see the inaugural image, visit: http://www.gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=15374 -end- To subscribe to the list, send a message to: hqnews-subscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To remove your address from the list, send a message to: hqnews-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
