Curiosity, the rover sitting on the surface of Mars and doing all kinds of science stuff, just snapped a new Facebook profile picture. The rover just took some time out from performing experiments to take a self-portrait, and it’s easily the best picture of the incredible contraption yet–even if it does sort of look like an Instagram filter has been applied (it’s actually just Mars’ sandy environment).
As Wired notes, the picture is actually 55 different photos, each taken by Curiosity’s MAHLI camera, all stitched together. The camera is attached to an arm on the rover and it can reach out and photograph part of itself, but it can’t reach far enough to snap a photo of its entire body without the arm getting in the way.
Photo credit: NASA
In the last few hours, NADA has released the raw, high-res photos that made up the composite you see above. This one, in particular, is a pretty incredible sight to behold:
Photo credit: airqkosmo on Flickr
Hilariously, some people claim to see a large, angry, black man in the reflection of that circle thing on Curiosity’s “head.” If you squint, you can kind of see something that does look a bit like a man with some wires coming out of his ears.
A helpful Reddit user even posted a “fixed” image that shows the man:
Photo credit: jerk_van_face on Reddit
