April 24, 2017

The bowl of windstuff

A Piece of Mars: Get out your red and cyan glasses to see an old crater, which fills this 0.775×0.7 km (0.48×0.43 mi) scene. The crater punched through many thin layers when it formed, some of which you can still […]
April 17, 2017

A change of fluids

A Piece of Mars: Water carved this ~800 m (0.5 mi) wide channel billions of years ago. The water dried up, and since then it’s been sand that flows through here (from the right), building up lovely dunes. A single […]
April 10, 2017

Two directions

A Piece of Mars: Sometimes I just want to show the interior of a dune field, because it’s full of waves: ripples and dune crests, slip faces, all of which signs of movement. The dunes in this 0.67×0.47 km (0.41×0.29 […]
April 3, 2017

Where on Mars is this dune?

A Piece of Mars: This 0.48×0.27 km (0.3×0.17 mi) scene shows a rotund barchan dune. Can you tell from looking at it where on Mars it might be? To me the most obvious feature are the bumpy piles at the […]
March 27, 2017

A big rock in a big air stream

A Piece of Mars: Sand pours in from the top of this 1.95×1.95 km (1.21×1.21 mi) scene. The sand piles up and up (here ~115 m or 377 ft high), but ahead (at the bottom) is a mountain poking up. […]
March 20, 2017

More Earth-like views of Mars

A Piece of Mars: In a recent post (Dunes in a Colorful Hole), I showed some dunes crawling over layered terrain, with a view that looked a lot like some desert regions of Earth. Here’s another spot on Mars (0.95×1.1 […]
March 14, 2017

Windblown or not? Probably…

A Piece of Mars: This 0.95×0.95 km (0.59×0.59 mi) scene shows an eroding surface punctured by some old craters. Long, thin lines seem to form in the wake of many brighter knobs. Are those thin lines windblown in origin? They […]
March 8, 2017

Hills made by wind and ice

A Piece of Mars: A fluid is something that fills a container it’s put into, and it includes both gas and liquids. This 0.7×0.5 km (0.43×0.31 mi) scene shows hills of sediment left behind by two different fluids (wind and […]
February 27, 2017

Dunes in a colorful hole

A Piece of Mars: Gray dunes have migrated over reddish rock, moving toward a narrowing cleft surrounded by tall tan cliffs. Bright lines on the dunes are exposed internal layers (bones of the dunes, really) that show you where the […]