美国有线新闻 CNN NASA公布18亿像素火星图片（在线收听）

It all starts now with a picture. They say pictures are worth a thousand words. These are said to have 1.8 billion pixels. And while it looks like a high resolution image of a desert landscape, maybe in Utah, it's actually the desert landscape of Mars, taken from Mars.

今天的节目从一张照片开始。有人说这些照片“一图值千言”。据称，这些照片的像素达到18亿。虽然其看上去像是犹他州沙漠景观的高分辨率图像，但它其实是在火星上拍摄的火星沙漠景观。

NASA has several active missions there. This panorama was captured by a rover named Curiosity. It's the key part of a $2.5 billion project to investigate the planet's environment. What looks like one picture according to NASA is actually made up of 1,200 individual images that were taken over several days. Scientists can zoom in to see distant details, for instance, the rim of the crater that Curiosity is in. Pan left and you can see another crater estimated to be three miles wide. An area that's rich in clay, unique features of the land, a cliff — it's all visible here. And from the details we can see of the Curiosity rover itself, a sundial is there to indicate what time of the sol it is.

美国国家航空航天局（简称NASA）有多个正在火星上进行的任务。这张全景照片由“好奇”号火星探测器拍摄。这是斥资25亿美元的火星环境调查项目的关键组成部分。NASA表示，虽然看起来像一张照片，但这张照片实际上由1200张图像组合而成，拍摄时间历经数天。科学家可以放大照片，看到远处的细节，比如，“好奇”号所在的陨石坑边缘。往左移动，你可以看到另一个约3英里宽的陨石坑。一个富含粘土的地区、土地的独特之处、悬崖——这些都可以在照片中看到。从细节上，我们还可以看到“好奇”号，其载有一个日晷，用来指示索尔时间。

Scientists call days on Mars "sols". Each ones about 39 and 1/2 minutes longer than each Earth day. You can also see the tracks the rover made through the Martian dirt as it ambled across the planet's surface. The photos were taken around the time of last Thanksgiving. While NASA's employees were off enjoying turkey, the organization made Curiosity work. That is to say it gave the rover the command to take lots of pictures that could be stitched together to complete the panorama.

科学家将火星上的一天称为“索尔”。索尔日大约比地球日长39.5分钟。当火星探测器在火星表面漫步时，你还可以看到探测器穿过火星土壤所留下的轨迹。这些照片在去年感恩节前后拍摄。当时NASA工作人员正在休假并享用火鸡，所以NASA让“好奇”号工作。也就是说，他们向“好奇”号发出指令，让其拍摄大量照片，这些照片可以拼接在一起完成全景图。