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December 16, 2020
16 December, 2020 This year I haven’t had time to write many blog posts. That’s a shame, because they’re what often reminds me of how amazing Mars is (and by extension, the Earth, and all the other worlds out there). […]
July 17, 2020
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 […]
May 26, 2020
May 26, 2020 There are sand dunes near both the north and south poles of Mars. The ones I’m showing today are on the floor of Jeans crater, which is down at 69.5°S (for reference, on Earth, some bits of […]
October 1, 2019
Oct. 1, 2019 It’s spring in the northern hemisphere on Mars. Actually, as of today, it’s pretty close to northern summer solstice, but the recent crop of released HiRISE images mostly come from the spring season. Northern polar dunes on […]
August 21, 2019
Aug. 21, 2019 Trolling through the HiRISE image catalog, I came across some dunes that look a bit like bacteria. (Well okay, they look like some sort of microbe to my eye, which is highly untrained in looking at microbes, […]
February 11, 2019
When I look for something to blog about, I usually go to the HiRISE catalog to see if there are any new pictures that I find interesting. Today this lovely dune field caught my eye: HiRISE images are about 6 […]
August 28, 2018
Richardson crater is located at 72ºS, about 1000 km (~621 miles) from the south pole of Mars. It’s a moderately large crater, about 90 km (56) miles across, and it’s mostly filled by one of the biggest dune fields in […]
July 16, 2018
In many areas on Earth that get winter snow, spring thaw is a messy time. Frozen ground turns to mud, and there may be runoff everywhere from melting snow and spring rain. Or if you live in a place that […]
May 9, 2018
Here’s a grand dune, making its stately way northward under winds blowing mainly from the south-southeast (bottom to top), with a secondary wind blowing from the southwest (lower left to upper right). There are two rippled and sharp-crested slip faces […]