European Space Agency officials released what they're calling the biggest postcard in the world. The view of Mars, from the Mars Express orbiter, measures 79 feet (24 meters) by 4.4 feet (1.35 meters).

The image shows a north-south stretch of Martian landscape 2,300 miles (3,700 kilometers) long and 103 miles (166 kilometers) wide. The picture covers a surface area bigger than Germany. It contains 2.5 gigabytes of uncompressed data.

The picture was taken from an altitude of between 170 and 515 miles (275-830) kilometers. Because of the varying height from which the photograph was taken, the section of Mars shown has different dimensions. At the start, the width is 103 miles (166 kilometers), at the orbiter's closest point to Mars the width is 39 miles (62 kilometers), and at the end it is 48 miles (78 kilometers).

The picture starts at 52 degrees South and ends at 12 degrees North, the Gusev crater and the NASA Spirit rover landing site lies at about 14.5 degrees South.

Credit: ESA/Mars Express