August 5, 2014
A piece of Mars: What on Mars is this (the scene is 600×450 m, or 0.37×0.28 mi)? It can be hard to tell. The lines are ridges of windblown dunes or ripples, the dark gray stuff is active sand blowing […]
July 29, 2014
A piece of Mars: This 1018×1352 m (0.63×0.84 mi) dune-covered scene has split topography: the the bottom part is up on a plateau, and the upper part is in a broad valley. The dunes up on the plateau are smaller […]
July 22, 2014
A piece of Mars: Last December I blogged about a picture of a sand dune taken in early northern spring. This is the same dune, without frost, now that summer has come to the northern hemisphere and all the frost […]
July 8, 2014
A piece of Mars: Using dunes to interpret the winds can be a tricky business. Here’s one reason why: most of the dunes here go from the upper left to lower right. But the ones inside the funky oblong crater […]
July 1, 2014
A piece of Mars: Curiosity has been trolling around on Mars for one martian year, so I think it’s time I posted an update on where it is and what it’s seeing. Right now (late June 2014), the rover is […]
June 24, 2014
A piece of Mars: This crater (290 m or 950 ft across) is crawling with all sorts of ripples and dunes. The wind mainly blows from the top to the bottom of the frame, and it is responsible for the […]
June 18, 2014
A piece of Mars: Never mind the 4 m (13 ft) boulders that have fallen downslope, or the rippled sandy surfaces here. Look at those bright swirls in the ground. Those are the former interiors of sand dunes, which were […]
June 13, 2014
A piece of Mars: Which way did the wind blow here? You can tell by looking at the dune and its ripples. The slip face (the avalanching slope of the dune) faces downwind, so the strongest wind here mainly blows […]
June 2, 2014
A piece of Mars: Over time, windblown sand can wear down a surface. This isn’t so common on Earth, where water, ice, and life are more likely to change the landscape, but it’s typical of many places on Mars. Here, […]