spring
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, […]
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 31, 2017
A Piece of Mars: This 0.7×0.5 km (0.43x.31 mi) scene shows Mars’ giant yellow bubble wrap, with each “bubble” about 100 m across (seriously, don’t you want to pop them?). These are actually a type of dune called a “dome […]
December 5, 2016
A Piece of Mars: Martian spiders, or araneiforms, are geological structures found at high latitudes on Mars. The dark splotch with branching arms in this 0.48×0.27 km (0.3×0.17 mi) scene is a good example. They form in the springtime, when […]
November 7, 2014
A piece of Mars: This 600×450 m (1969×1476 ft) polar scene shows sinuous channels 2-8 m (7-26 ft) wide carved out of ice-filled and ice-covered terrain. They’re not formed by flowing water, but instead by flowing gas that gets trapped […]
March 31, 2014
A piece of Mars: Mars can be a strange place. This is actually a sand dune on Mars not far from the north pole. Here it’s imaged in the springtime when the dunes are still covered in bright CO2 frost, […]