wind streak
May 16, 2016
A Piece of Mars: There’s a dune field migrating past a 230 m (755 ft) diameter crater, creating a 1.6 km (1 mi) long “shadow” that’s empty of dunes. Why? The rim of the crater pokes up just enough to […]
May 9, 2016
A Piece of Mars: This 90 m (295 ft) crater impacted into a windy, cratered plain. It’s now partly filled with dark sand, but where did that sand come from? Looking closely you’ll see that many of the boulders that […]
April 4, 2016
A Piece of Mars: For the last few billion years, the wind has (by far) moved more sediment around on Mars than any other geological process. Not tectonics, volcanism, fluvial activity, or impact cratering (although a case has been made […]
March 16, 2016
A Piece of Mars: Normally I post in color, but sometimes you need to back out to the grayscale images to see the big awesome things. This scene is 4.6×2.6 km (2.8×1.6 mi); the conical hill is 1.4 km (0.89 […]
October 26, 2015
A Piece of Mars: This 3.2×1.8 km (2×1.1 mi) area shows terrain covered by bright dust. Dark stripes are areas where wind has lightly scoured the surface, revealing the dark material beneath. Faint bright lines criss-cross the surface – these […]
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 […]
September 15, 2014
A piece of Mars: Wind flow on Mars can be quite dramatic. Here, a single wind-sculpted hill stands 1.5 km (0.93 mi) wide and 600 m (1970 ft) high (color shows elevation). That sounds big, but vastly larger is the […]
December 27, 2013
A piece of Mars: A single dune sits on the surface of Mars, not too far from the north pole. It’s early spring, but this far north the dune is still covered in white CO2 frost (as well as a […]
November 18, 2013
A piece of Mars: Is it a comet? With Comet ISON in the news these days it’s hard to tell. No, this is a brand-new meteorite impact on the surface of Mars. The impactor hit the ground, blasted through a […]