dust

July 17, 2020

Those crazy southern polar dunes

July 17, 2020 A couple months ago I wrote a blog post about defrosting dunes in Jeans crater, some wild southern polar dunes on Mars. Well it’s been that time of year on Mars, so I’m going to show some […]
August 2, 2018

Oh, Mars!

The HiRISE camera has a website called HiWish that lets anybody (yes, even you!) make image requests. That’s right, you can choose any spot on Mars that HiRISE can see, pick any season (or let them pick for you if […]
July 8, 2018

Field of barchans

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 […]
February 12, 2018

Where dune fields begin

This is the upwind edge of a dune field (825×625 m, 0.51×0.39 mi). Winds blow down a cliff (offscreen) from the lower right, blowing sand toward the upper left. Elongated dunes have formed parallel to the resultant wind direction, only […]
February 5, 2018

Mars’ “Type A” wind

The busy, busy wind has moved a lot of things to make this 0.6×0.85 km (0.37×0.53 mi) landscape. First it built a big dark dune, covering it and the surrounding surface with ripples. Then it dumped a bunch of bright […]
January 30, 2018

Smash! Whoosh…

A Piece of Mars: The dark splash pattern in this 0.9×0.9 km (0.56×0.56 mi) scene (click on it for a better view) is the site of an impact crater that appeared between images sometime between August 2006 and March 2010 […]
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 […]
November 6, 2017

Black and tan

A Piece of Mars: Dunes in the top row in this 0.73×0.47 km (0.46×0.29 mi) scene are dark but those in the lower row are brighter. Why? They’re all probably made out of the same kind of sand, which is […]
September 17, 2017

Dust trapped on the lee side

A Piece of Mars: This 0.95×1 km (.59x.62 mi) scene shows the center of a small dune field. The dunes are shaped by three winds blowing from three different directions: from the west-southwest, east, and south. The north-facing slopes are […]