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From The Astronomy Picture of the Day for 2000 May 14 :

Explanation: Scroll right to unfold one of the great panoramas ever taken on the surface of Mars. For best viewing, click and hold the right arrow icon at the bottom of your browser window. This image, dubbed a "presidential panorama" by the Mars Pathfinder team, shows in colorful detail the surroundings of the Sagan Memorial Station.

Question: Why did the Mars Pathfinder team dub the image "presidential"?

below: From here. Credit JPL/NASA. Click for full size.

Mars Presidential Panorama

uhoh
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1 Answers1

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Some additional information found, but no conclusive answer reached.

This image was in fact also The Astronomy Picture of the Day for 1997 July 22

The Pathfinder website also calls it the "gallery" panorama, but does not mention the origin of the name.

A JPL archive entry also calls it the "gallery pan", and also mentions the images it consists of where taken during sols 8, 9 and 10.

The existance of a second panorama, the "monster panorama" leads me to believe that the meaning of names like "gallery", "monster" and "presidential" are simply just that the images are large.

SE - stop firing the good guys
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