complex wind

September 2, 2020

Dune on a hill

Sept. 2, 2020 Dunes don’t usually form on hills. They’re made of sand, which is moved by wind (and water and ice) and tends to linger where it gets stuck. You probably know this intimately if you’ve spent time at […]
August 21, 2018

Different sands

There’s a lot we don’t understand about the sediment on Mars. Water, wind, ice, changing temperatures, and volcanic eruptions can all break rocks into grains small enough for the wind to transport. The smallest grains are lofted by the wind, […]
March 12, 2018

Wind on Mars and the Huygens-Fresnel Principle

How about some basic physics? It’ll be easy, I promise. Just look at the pretty picture below (click on it to see it better): The big crater is ~400 m (1/4 mile) across. Wind blows sediment from the top to […]
January 18, 2018

Varying wind directions

A Piece of Mars: This 0.5×0.4 km (0.31×0.25 mi) scene shows two dunes near the north pole. The shape of the dunes indicates two main winds: one blowing left to right (which makes slip faces on the right side, one […]
October 30, 2017

Mars’ corduory

A Piece of Mars: The wind on Mars likes to make textiles (unfortunately the term geotextiles is already taken for other purposes). This 1×0.6 km (0.62×0.37 mi) scene shows two different sets of ripples. The larger set has straight to […]
September 25, 2017

The crazy laciness of martian TARs

A Piece of Mars: Take a look at the windblown stuff in this 0.55×0.625 km (0.34×0.39 mi) scene. Those are intricate patterns of a sort of dune-ripple thing that forms all over on Mars, but not so much on Earth. […]
August 14, 2017

Wind and maybe water too

A Piece of Mars: Along the right side of this 0.5×0.5 km (0.31×0.31 mi) scene is the rim of a crater – the stripes are layers exposed (and then perhaps draped by falling ejecta) as the crater formed. To the […]
June 19, 2017

The real tetrahedrons of Mars

A Piece of Mars: The real tetrahedrons of Mars are dunes, built by winds blowing sand from more than one direction. This 0.5×0.5 km (0.31×0.31 mi) area shows a dune formed from two winds that are about 90 degrees apart: […]
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 […]