Mars Photo of the Day - Apr 13 2012

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Today's Image of Mars shows a closeup of the eastern wall of a pit in Amazonis Planitia, courtesy of HiRISE. The darker streaks you see are the result of dust avalanches that removed a thin layer of light dust that covers the rest of the surface. 

You can see in the upper part of this pit near the rim that there are four distinct layers, which is indicative of at least four separate lava flows that covered the area. The terrain directly surrounding the pit is much less defined, which may be the result of a heavy dust covering that has muted the features. 

Another sign that there is a havy dust covering surrounding the pit is the bluish haze just around the rim, which the HiRISE team believes could be suspended dust. This can happen if wind lifts some of the dust covering into the air. 

Clicking on this image will take you to the original high resolution image from HiRISE. [See their caption on images of this pit]

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Mars Photo of the Day - Mar 26 2012

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Today's Images of Mars come from HiRISE and show two avalanches in the North Polar Region of Mars! The HiRISE team was kind of enough to outline all of them in their collection of images from 2008. The left images show the context for the avalanche and outlines what area the image to the right will show. 

The dust clouds produced by the avalanches can be huge! The one shown in the top image measured about 180m in diameter and extends around 190m from the base of the cliff. The shadows to the lower left of each image indicate that these are dust clouds and not just a strange feature on the surface.

The particular cliff imaged here is over 700m tall and has slopes of over 60 degrees in some areas. The top left of these images shows the carbon dioxide frost that still covered the top of the scarps.

It is important that we learn how and why these geological processes work so that we can get an accurate picture of how Mars has evolved and what it looked like in the past. If we better understand the past environment on Mars we can better determine if Mars was once a planet more hospitable to life and we can use that information to determine what the environment on Mars is now and will become.

Clicking on these images will take you to the original high resolution images from HiRISE. [See their caption for the images]

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Mars Photo of the Day - Oct 26 2011

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Today's Image of Mars is of an avalanche, which has kicked up a large dust cloud. This image is looking down the scarp, or cliff and shows different layered deposits typical in these features. Scientists are still uncertain as to why these avalanches occur, but they believe they could be the result of temperature changes in the layers of ice or large gusts of wind passing over the rocks.

Clicking this image will take you to the original captioned image by HiRISE.

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