aeolian
May 3, 2022
May 3, 2022 I don’t typically have much time for these posts anymore. The pandemic seems to have changed everything. But sometimes I need to remind myself why I do this for a living. Going to look through Mars’ gorgeous […]
February 1, 2021
1 February, 2021 Are we tired of the pandemic yet? My kids haven’t gone to an actual school since last March. Fortunately we’re all healthy. I’m able to do most of my work, but it’s not easy. So let’s go […]
June 15, 2020
June 15, 2020 Utopia Planitia is an ancient plain in the northern lowlands of Mars, thought to be made of volcanic rocks that were buried, more than 3 billion years ago, by sediments carried by water coming down from the […]
March 25, 2020
March 25, 2020 It’s been an interesting few weeks. Like many folks, I’m trying to work from home while keeping my kids busy. I’m fortunate to have a job that allows me to work at home, so I can continue […]
October 1, 2019
Oct. 1, 2019 It’s spring in the northern hemisphere on Mars. Actually, as of today, it’s pretty close to northern summer solstice, but the recent crop of released HiRISE images mostly come from the spring season. Northern polar dunes on […]
September 24, 2018
Being a geomorphologist and reading a landscape is a little bit like being one of the forensic scientists on CSI (or choose your own favorite investigative show). A Mars geomorphologist usually has to do this entirely by remote sensing. So […]
July 8, 2018
It’s July, and I’ve had a busy summer so far. This is my first post in a few weeks – I’ve been out at various meetings, and last week I spent with my family on vacation. The one week of […]
May 9, 2018
Here’s a grand dune, making its stately way northward under winds blowing mainly from the south-southeast (bottom to top), with a secondary wind blowing from the southwest (lower left to upper right). There are two rippled and sharp-crested slip faces […]
April 30, 2018
Some windblown dunes on Mars are just beyond words. Take these beasts in this 0.95×0.95 km (0.59×0.59 mi) scene: These are a peculiar type of bedform called a transverse aeolian ridge, or TAR for short, with a spacing of about […]