HiRISE images

A Piece of Mars: The large dunes in the middle of this 375x450 m (0.23x0.28 mi) scene run along a valley (the small dunes at top and bottom are on high ground). What's amazing about this is that the ends of the large dunes extend into the valley walls. That is, they're covered by the stuff in the valley walls. Usually dunes sit on top of all the other geologic structures, but not here. These dunes formed a long time ago. And then a lot of sediment piled on top of them - but without destroying them (which is what... read more ❯

A Piece of Mars: This 0.7x0.5 km (0.43x.31 mi) scene shows Mars' giant yellow bubble wrap, with each "bubble" about 100 m across (seriously, don't you want to pop them?). These are actually a type of dune called a "dome dune", and they're about as small as this type of martian dune can get. Dome dunes form where the wind blows from one main wind direction, but shifts a bit in direction (we call it a "wide unimodal distribution"). These are near the north pole, and at this time of year (early northern spring), they're still covered in winter frost,... read more ❯

A Piece of Mars: Sand dunes are one of the few sedimentary phenomena that leave behind layers that aren't horizontal. They tend to have a characteristic lean to them (and we call them cross-strata). So when I see something that looks like tilted layers on Mars, I take notice. This 0.625x0.5 km (0.39x0.31 mi) scene shows a steep slope, the side of a narrow graben system called Sirenum Fossae. The cliff starts at the top where overhanging rocks make shadows, and it ends at the bottom where there are small dunes. Along the slope are many narrow gullies from where... read more ❯

A Piece of Mars: No great scientific insights today, just a really lovely view of bright TARs and some very dark sand in this 0.875x0.5 km (0.54x0.31 mi) scene. Only one major wind acts in this region, moving sediment toward the west. Jezero crater, a prime landing site candidate for the Mars 2020 rover, lies 50 km to the west, so some of the sand blown into that crater passed through this area at some point in the past. (HiRISE, ESP_050899_1985, NASA/JPL/Univ. of Arizona) read more ❯

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 see what I can do to make nice views. Here's a series of barchan dunes marching away from a tall stack of layers in Becquerel crater, with no vertical exaggeration. (HiRISE, DTEEC_045140_2015_044784_2015, NASA/JPL/Univ. of Arizona) read more ❯

A Piece of Mars: This 523x750 m (0.32x0.47 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 is somewhat rare on Mars (but common on Earth). The main sand-moving wind blows from the right, forming a long avalanching slope (you can see long bright lines of grain fall slips at the lower center). But at some point a wind blew from the... read more ❯

A Piece of Mars: The real tetrahedrons of Mars are dunes, built by winds blowing sand from more than one direction. This 0.5x0.5 km (0.31x0.31 mi) area shows a dune formed from two winds that are about 90 degrees apart: one blowing from the bottom and one blowing from the right. This makes the dune have two slip faces, which is a rare occurrence on Earth dunes. (Earth dunes are complicated by superposed secondary dunes that interfere with and obscure this pattern. Or if they're small enough to not have those secondary dunes, then they are changing fast enough that... read more ❯

A Piece of Mars: Having a bad day? You're in good company with these dunes in this 0.96x0.48 km (0.6x0.3 mi) scene. The gray barchanoid dunes are covered in ripples, as the wind valiantly tries to push the sand to the dune crests. But they are besieged by other processes at work. Dark scribbles show how dust devils have swept by, removing dust and probably scattering a little bit of the sand. The steep slip faces are not covered in dry avalanches typical of active dunes, but rather they appear eroded, as if some force locked the dune in place... read more ❯

A Piece of Mars: Up on the tallest volcanoes, the wind screams downhill at night. This 500x500m (0.31x0.31 mi) scene shows how dust is carried downhill, but only that which is trapped behind boulders and crater rims sticks around. The big hole may be a window into a lava tube. Formation of the window itself is one of the younger events to have formed this landscape, as the screaming dust hasn't fully filled in the hole (although it has begun the process and formed a tailing wind streak). (HiRISE ESP_050089_1660, NASA/JPL/Univ. of Arizona) read more ❯

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 850x550 m (0.53x0.34 mi) scene shows the barchanoid dunes of the Bagnold dune field, imperceptibly crawling southwestward (to the lower left). This is the site where the Curiosity rover first encountered an active dune in its trek through Gale crater. This image was taken after the rover's intensive field campaign of the two dunes in the upper middle of the frame - the rover is in fact in this frame (extra credit if you can... read more ❯