crater
June 27, 2016
A Piece of Mars: Three things are trying to hide in this 0.96×0.48 km (0.6×0.3 mi) scene. 1) Craters are slowly being both scoured and buried by migrating sand, 2) the sand itself is hiding in the lee of crater […]
June 13, 2016
A Piece of Mars: The two small dark craters (2.25-2.4 m, or 7.4-7.8 ft across) are brand new, having appeared in CTX images sometime between May 2007 and April 2008. They punched through a layer of bright dust and threw […]
May 31, 2016
A Piece of Mars: Some parts of Mars, like this one, are very dusty. This 1.92×1.1 km (1.2×0.67 mi) area has built up a thick deposit of dust that slowly buries the impact craters until they’re mere ghosts of the […]
May 16, 2016
A Piece of Mars: There’s a dune field migrating past a 230 m (755 ft) diameter crater, creating a 1.6 km (1 mi) long “shadow” that’s empty of dunes. Why? The rim of the crater pokes up just enough to […]
May 9, 2016
A Piece of Mars: This 90 m (295 ft) crater impacted into a windy, cratered plain. It’s now partly filled with dark sand, but where did that sand come from? Looking closely you’ll see that many of the boulders that […]
April 25, 2016
A Piece of Mars: In this 480×270 m scene (0.3×0.17 mi), there are a bunch of “ripples” spaced by 5-20 m (the quotes are because we don’t know yet if these are ripples, dunes, or some other new kind of […]
April 19, 2015
A piece of Mars: This 300×300 m (984×984 ft) scene shows bright windblown dunes or ripples arrayed in a lacy pattern (the biggest ones are about 5 m, or 16 ft, across). This is near the landing site of Ares […]
April 10, 2015
A piece of Mars: Below this ~550 m (0.3 mi) wide crater lies a ~1.3 km (0.8 mi) long “beard”, the wake of an ancient flow around the crater. Based on its location on Mars, I’m guessing the fluid flowing […]
January 26, 2015
A piece of Mars: This scene (600×450 m or 1969×1476 ft) is covered in small craters, formed by the splash of a larger crater nearby. They cover everything, even the bright ripples visible on the right. So the ripples were […]