ripples
July 26, 2012
A piece of Mars: Wind streaks are a common sight on Mars. They are formed either by the wind blowing stuff away or blowing stuff in, and it can be quite difficult to tell which is which. In this case, […]
July 10, 2012
A piece of Mars: What an intriguing mess this is. These are dunes or ripples, oriented every which way, and mottled with white spots. The different orientations tell us that the winds blow from several different directions, on timescales long […]
June 18, 2012
A piece of Mars: Sometime in the past, large ripples wandered the dusty lanes of this landscape, sandblasting the hills as they marched on by. Those ripples stopped moving and turned into the fossils you see here. Their bumpy texture […]
June 17, 2012
A piece of Mars: Here is an example of an aeolian enigma. Dunes are depositional, meaning they are made of stuff that piles up on a surface. But these dunes show the strata of the underlying rock within them, which […]
May 30, 2012
A piece of Mars: I know, I keep showing ripples. But they’re all so different. This one has a distinct swirl appearance, like it’s stretched and twisted taffy. The complexities of the winds that create these things are not at […]
May 28, 2012
A piece of Mars: My brain keeps seeing it as stuffed pillows, but it’s the other way around — the sun is coming from the upper left, so the centers of the little polygons are low and their edges are […]
May 27, 2012
A piece of Mars: Small, dark ripples have overridden larger, bright ones. The larger ones have some interesting shapes — arcs, splits that resemble tuning forks, and even circles. Their shape is accentuated by the smaller, very regular ripples between […]
May 24, 2012
A piece of Mars: Is it the latest in patterns for ties, or is it Mars? (Can it be both?) These are some unusually regular dunes on Mars, separated by a bouldered surface. The dunes have interesting pale bands common […]
May 20, 2012
A piece of Mars: Many small craters on Mars are filled, at least in part, by small dunes or ripples. It’s one of the distinguishing features of Mars — a surface marked by geology both old (craters) and young (dunes). […]