dunes
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 […]
March 28, 2016
A Piece of Mars: The wind blows different sorts of sediment in different ways. Ultimately they pile up because some oddity in nature makes one spot accumulate more sediment than other spots, allowing that windblown pile of stuff to grow. […]
March 16, 2016
A Piece of Mars: Normally I post in color, but sometimes you need to back out to the grayscale images to see the big awesome things. This scene is 4.6×2.6 km (2.8×1.6 mi); the conical hill is 1.4 km (0.89 […]
January 12, 2016
A Piece of Mars: This 480×270 m (0.3×0.17 mi) scene shows a dark dune peeking out from under its cover of winter frost. In this picture it’s late spring, but still cold up at this latitude – it’s as far […]
December 21, 2015
Today is December 21, 2015 (northern winter and southern summer solstice on Earth). On Mars it is Ls = 84º, Mars Year 33 (about 12 sols from northern summer and southern winter solstice on Mars). It is sol 1200 of […]
December 14, 2015
Sorry for the pun in the title there, but NASA asked for it by naming their rover like that. And you’ve seen it done a hundred times, so let’s grit our teeth, smile, and carry on. Anyway. So I’m more […]
November 4, 2015
A Piece of Mars: Most of the scene (0.96×0.54 km or 0.6×0.34 mi) is one long slope of a dune. The crest is the line in the top right; the ground below is in the bottom left. If you ever […]
October 19, 2015
A Piece of Mars: These “peas-in-a-pod” are dunes covered in long ripples (the scene is 960×480 m, or 0.6×0.3 mi). They’re a bit odd, surrounded by a rippled apron. It reminds me of melted-looking dunes that are common in high […]
October 5, 2015
A Piece of Mars: The dark dunes in this 0.96×0.54 km (0.60×0.34 mi) scene are slowly migrating towards the lower left. Look closer and you’ll see brighter ripples between the dunes – the biggest ones are ~8m (26 ft) apart. […]