Andrew Bodrov is a master of panoramic photography based in Tallinn, Estonia. With over two decades of experience and a passion for pushing creative boundaries, Andrew has brought the surface of Mars closer to us through his stunning gigapanoramas, crafted using images captured by NASA’s Perseverance Curiosity Rover.
Below, Andrew shares the story of how he creates these extraordinary panoramas, offering a glimpse into his unique process and the artistry behind his work.
I began stitching panoramas of Mars from NASA in August 2010, when the Curiosity rover landed in Gale Crater. Since then, I have been regularly publishing color panoramas of Mars on:
- Perseverance, Mars – Panorama Set: The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
- Curiosity, Mars – Panorama Set: With its rover named Curiosity, Mars Science Laboratory mission is part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the Red Planet.
Mars Panorama – Perseverance rover: Martian solar day 0046 by Andrew Bodrov
The rover designs were initially engineered to capture spherical panoramas using several onboard cameras:
- The cameras on the robotic arm are used for so-called “selfies.”
- The mast-mounted cameras capture the surroundings, including gigapixel panoramas.
It’s important to note that shooting fully spherical panoramas is not part of the scientific mission. As a result, panoramas where the entire rover is visible are very rare. Additionally, the rovers photograph only the surroundings up to the horizon and never capture the sky. That’s why the sky in my spherical panoramas has also been digitally smoothed and expanded based on the actual sky color observed as the panorama was being acquired on Mars.
All the source images are published by NASA and are freely available. For stitching the panoramas, I use PTGui. I can confidently say that it is the best software for panorama stitching—I’ve been using it since its first beta version.
A few more details about the gigapixel spherical panorama captured by Perseverance on Sols 1356-1357 (December 12-13, 2024):
- It consists of 794 frames taken by the Mastcam with a 110mm focal length, showing the surroundings, and 60 frames taken with a 34mm focal length, showing the rover itself.
- I stitch the frames with different focal lengths separately, save them, and then merge the 34mm project into the 110mm project using the “Append Other Project” function.
- Stitching the 110mm panorama involves specific challenges. For this particular panorama, the automatic stitching process produced this result, which isn’t the worst but can sometimes be much worse.

- Next, I select 50–100 frames at a time, manually place control points, and optimize them. This helps identify and remove erroneous control points. Steps with selection and optimization by 50-100 frames are repeated until all frames are optimized.
- Once the 110mm and 34mm panoramas are optimized, I load the 34mm project into 110mm project and then manually add control points between 110mm and 34mm corresponding frames. Then only the 34mm frames need optimization at this stage.
- In the final panorama, the sky is digitally recreated, and a “patch” is added to cover the mast’s mounting point.
4.5-billion-pixel of Mars by NASA’s Perseverance Rover by Andrew Bodrov
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