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The first authentic space selfie on another planet.

[edit]

Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes. Voting period ends on 5 Jun 2014 at 06:13:54 (UTC)

Original – Curiosity rover took the first authentic space selfie on Mars using its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on September 8, 2012 (UTC)
Reason
Historical and unique picture not replaceable by other pictures. While self-portraits were attempted by other spacecraft, Discovery News described Curiosity as the only spacecraft that can take truly authentic selfie. The first selfie on Mars by Curiosity was shown in this picture. High EV in showing an important milestone in space exploration. With the historical importance of this raw image, technical and resolution standards may be lower. No digital manipulation except to crop the black edges.
Articles in which this image appears
Space selfie
FP category for this image
Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Space/Understanding
Creator
z22
  • I would think that although it is from the same subject (Curiosity rover), but these two images are much difference. The File:PIA16239 High-Resolution Self-Portrait by Curiosity Rover Arm Camera.jpg was from a mosaic of photos taken by Curiosity almost two months after its first selfie. The photos had gone through a major digital manipulation by engineers such as stitching, adjusting colors, etc. So that resulting image is a featured picture from the perspective of being a very good quality image of a rover on Mars. However, the picture being considered here was proposed from the historical and EV perspective. The first achievement of something new in space exploration is something of a high historical value. Not only the first selfie was taken on Mars (almost two months prior to the image you mentioned), the single shot selfie was uploaded almost immediately to social media sites in just the same fashion as what people would do with their selfies. Most human selfies are from a single shot, not from stitching hundreds of photos. I think the first of something in a similar subject has a higher EV even when the picture itself is not that clear. For example, the picture File:Tartan Ribbon.jpg has high EV because it is believed to be the first color photo. I'm sure that the same ribbon was used to take many other color photographs, but the File:Tartan Ribbon.jpg still retain its historical value of being the first. Z22 (talk) 16:04, 26 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Because if "first authentic space selfie" is what mankind considers important, valuable and historical about the space program, then .......... -- Colin°Talk 20:32, 27 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - If you try to imagine looking from the future at this picture, I think it would be fair to think of the selfie as a cultural artifact of the times during which mankind saw the rapid proliferation of smartphones and similar mobile devices (inventions that are sometimes characterized, uncontroversially, as some of the most significant inventions in modern history). I'm not arguing right now that the act of taking a selfie, by itself, is something profound or even consequential, but I think selfies are too pervasive to disappear completely from the history of the 2010s. Selfies have appeared on national news in the United States, at least (just to think of a few stories recently, the selfie at Mandela's memorial, the selfie at the Oscars, the selfie with David Ortiz and Obama at the White House), and even though I think most here would agree that these things shouldn't be newsworthy right now (there are abundant, more important things to cover in the world), it's now a fact that those selfies were news. So this image of Curiosity taking the first space selfie on another planet is special because it, in a way, conveys the era in which it was taken (either because selfies started becoming widespread in the 2010s or because selfies will lose their popularity in the near future). I recently came across the interesting factoid that the fax machine was invented at the same time migrants were traveling the Oregon Trail (in the mid 19th century), and it was pleasant to have these two different, vague timelines of history I had in my head (communication technology and the expansion of the American West) united by this one idea. Imagine a future historian coming upon this image and being led to a similarly interesting (yet perhaps disappointing) realization that humans had still not yet stepped foot on Mars by the time a significant portion of the world's population had smartphones. I'd be surprised if there were very strong objections to an image of an actor in the 1960s throwing up a V sign in his mugshot or a hypothetical image of astronauts doing the twist in the 1960s primarily on the grounds that those cultural artifacts are trifling or of little substance. I think it's also important to keep in mind that the picture candidate here has this sort of hybrid significance; it's not just a selfie, but an image of Curiosity on Mars (itself a significant achievement) presented in the idiom of the 2010s. I think it should also be noted that, on Wikipedia, Selfie has its own page, and, moreover, Space selfie does as well. Also, to clarify, this is not the "first authentic space selfie" (in fact, there is already a space selfie that is a Featured Picture), but the "first authentic space selfie on another planet." In the end, I'm not convinced that this qualifies as a Featured Picture, but I really don't think it should be denied with the primary reason being that selfies are silly. Tokugawapants (talk) 11:22, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment – This image is from the full resolution raw image of NASA's JPL. It was not a scaled-down version. The reason it is only one thousand pixels is that it was from a singles shot. Many higher resolution images from Curiosity are from stitching many raw images together. Z22 (talk) 11:03, 30 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not Promoted --Armbrust The Homunculus 07:37, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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