stabilized
June 21, 2013
A piece of Mars: Yep, these are dunes shaped into polygons. Each “cell” is about 25 m (~80 ft) across. The crests of these things are outlined in blue, as if somebody traced them with a pen (well it’s stretched […]
June 17, 2013
A piece of Mars: In the lower left of the image, a small hill stands above a plain partly covered by stabilized ripples. Boulders have rolled down the hill as it slowly erodes. If these ripples aren’t ever activated by […]
April 22, 2013
A piece of Mars: Everybody else loves this image because it shows an inverted channel — the remains of a stream that once flowed through this area. But I love it because the little dunes were also formed by a […]
March 15, 2013
A piece of Mars: Here are some old dunes that look a little like vertebrae of fossils (if you think they look like dragon spines poking out of the ground then you’re playing too many video games). The white areas […]
March 7, 2013
A piece of Mars: Not all piles of windblown sand are able to form proper dunes, with a fully developed avalanche on the downwind side. Here, bluish sand tries to make its way through hilly terrain, which both traps the […]
February 22, 2013
A piece of Mars: Some of the dunes on Mars are just plain weird. Here are some feather-shaped ones. I’m not sure anybody knows why they form these fractal shapes just yet. I don’t know of anything on Earth that […]
February 19, 2013
A piece of Mars: Dark sand has been blown into the scene from the upper right. It has piled up against older, brighter dunes that may now be inactive. The sand drifts on and on, piling up where the wind […]
February 3, 2013
A piece of Mars: Most dunes on Mars are the freshest, youngest features around. Not so here. The bright dunes near the bottom here are slowly being buried by debris coming down from the gullies on the slope, coming from […]
January 8, 2013
A piece of Mars: Dunes don’t usually have a rough surface texture like these do. It’s not clear what’s going on. Are they ancient dunes that are being eroded? What causes this particular texture? It seems unique to high elevations […]