Rare photos: Mars like NEVER seen before

After months of image collection, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration released new images from the surface of Mars on Sunday. Described by NASA as the 'Greeley Panorama' from the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, the first image documents the fifth Martian Winter of the mission.

The full-circle scene combines 817 images shot by the panoramic camera (Pancam). Here's a look at some stunning pictures that shows the terrain that surrounded the rover while it was stationary for four months of work during its most recent Martian mission.

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NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity catches its own late-afternoon shadow in this dramatically lit view eastward across Endeavour Crater on Mars. The crater spans about 22 kilometers in diameter.

This mosaic of images taken in mid-January 2012 shows the windswept vista northward (left) to northeastward (right) from the location where NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity spent its fifth Martian winter, an outcrop informally named "Greeley Haven."

The view includes sand ripples and other wind-sculpted features in the foreground and mid-field. The northern edge of the the "Cape York" segment of the rim of Endeavour Crater forms an arc across the upper half of the scene.

Opportunity's Pancam took the component images between the 2,811th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's Mars surface mission (December 21, 2011) and Sol 2,947 (May 8, 2012).

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