lfenton

July 13, 2017

Experimenting with 3D views

A Piece of Mars: I often use JMARS to visualize Mars data sets, especially images. They’ve recently updated their 3D layer, allowing folks to make lovely vistas by overlaying DTMs with images. I’m new at this, but I’ll experiment and […]
July 10, 2017

Reversing slip faces

A Piece of Mars: This 523×750 m (0.32×0.47 mi) scene shows a large dune. It’s quite colorful for some reason, although it’s partially false-color. What caught my eye is that the slip face on this dune has reversed direction, which […]
June 19, 2017

The real tetrahedrons of Mars

A Piece of Mars: The real tetrahedrons of Mars are dunes, built by winds blowing sand from more than one direction. This 0.5×0.5 km (0.31×0.31 mi) area shows a dune formed from two winds that are about 90 degrees apart: […]
June 15, 2017

The thinnest landslides

A Piece of Mars: In the dustiest regions of Mars, steep slopes occasionally produce very thin avalanches of dust, revealing a darker surface under the top layer of dust. This shows one that is 610 m (0.38 mi) long, running […]
June 5, 2017

Dunes fighting for survival

A Piece of Mars: Having a bad day? You’re in good company with these dunes in this 0.96×0.48 km (0.6×0.3 mi) scene. The gray barchanoid dunes are covered in ripples, as the wind valiantly tries to push the sand to […]
May 29, 2017

Weird and wild southern polar dunes

A Piece of Mars: This 0.96×0.48 km (0.6×0.3 mi) scene shows a bit of a south polar dune field. The more recently-active dark sand is rippled, but there are bright splotches where something else has happened. Presumably it’s ground ice […]
May 22, 2017

Is it an old fossil barchan dune?

A Piece of Mars: There are many barchans on Mars, those lovely isolated crescent-shaped dunes. In a few places there are what looks like ancient preserved barchans, now lithified. The mound in the center of this 0.96×0.54 km (0.6×0.33 mi) […]
May 8, 2017

Sand tails

A Piece of Mars: Up on the tallest volcanoes, the wind screams downhill at night. This 500x500m (0.31×0.31 mi) scene shows how dust is carried downhill, but only that which is trapped behind boulders and crater rims sticks around. The […]
May 1, 2017

Curiosity, recovering from the Bagnold dunes campaign

A Piece of Mars: You’ll probably want to click on this image to see the whole thing, it’s pretty big, and it’s worth seeing. This 850×550 m (0.53×0.34 mi) scene shows the barchanoid dunes of the Bagnold dune field, imperceptibly […]