aeolian
February 12, 2013
A piece of Mars: Sandwiched between hills, a huge stepped amphitheater has been carved out of the rock by the wind. The scene is 770×577 m across, with each giant step about 20 m wide. Just imagine a huge concert […]
February 10, 2013
A piece of Mars: The dark dune here seems to have a subtle rainbow color across it. Is it a real rainbow? Well, no. Part of it is that I’ve stretched the image to enhance color, so the dark dune […]
February 3, 2013
A piece of Mars: Most dunes on Mars are the freshest, youngest features around. Not so here. The bright dunes near the bottom here are slowly being buried by debris coming down from the gullies on the slope, coming from […]
February 1, 2013
A piece of Mars: These large dunes are located in Kaiser crater, a big crater in the southern midlatitudes. The scene is 789×592 m across. Imagine standing on one of these monsters, and seeing nothing but pristine ripples criscrossing all […]
January 21, 2013
A piece of Mars: What are those dark, flat circles and why are there little dunes sitting on top of them? They’re probably old impact craters that got filled in with dark sediment, and were then eroded flat. So you’re […]
January 11, 2013
A piece of Mars: A lovely little dune is right at the edge of this image, trying its best to migrate into the center of the frame. The bright sickle-shaped part of the dune is its slip face, where sand […]
January 8, 2013
A piece of Mars: Dunes don’t usually have a rough surface texture like these do. It’s not clear what’s going on. Are they ancient dunes that are being eroded? What causes this particular texture? It seems unique to high elevations […]
December 31, 2012
A piece of Mars: Dunes often cannibalize each other, with new dunes forming from the sand in older dunes. Here the tan dunes have formed from the sand that made up the grayish blue dunes. Notice the banding on the […]
December 19, 2012
A piece of Mars: On Earth, it’s typically water that erodes a landscape, as rivers cut down rocks, storms trigger landslides, and ocean waves eat away at shorelines. On Mars, it’s usually the wind that slowly grinds down a landscape. […]