Jan. 27, 2009

Sonja Alexander 
Headquarters, Washington 
202-358-1761 
sonja.r.alexander@nasa.gov   

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 based on the panoramic camera system that the Mars rovers Spirit 
and Opportunity have used to explore the Red Planet for more than 
five years. The Gigapan system was developed through a two-year 
collaboration between NASA and Carnegie Mellon University. 

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 

	
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