yardangs
November 13, 2013
A piece of Mars: Right at the edge of the largest volcano on Mars (Olympus Mons) is a steep cliff. Here, near that edge, are some car-sized boulders poking out from a thick blanket of dust. Strong winds blow down […]
August 29, 2013
A piece of Mars: These C and S-shaped things were once dunes that marched across the scene (from upper left to lower right), formed from sand deposited by the wind. Then that sand somehow became cemented, locking the dunes in […]
February 12, 2013
A piece of Mars: Sandwiched between hills, a huge stepped amphitheater has been carved out of the rock by the wind. The scene is 770×577 m across, with each giant step about 20 m wide. Just imagine a huge concert […]
December 19, 2012
A piece of Mars: On Earth, it’s typically water that erodes a landscape, as rivers cut down rocks, storms trigger landslides, and ocean waves eat away at shorelines. On Mars, it’s usually the wind that slowly grinds down a landscape. […]
October 9, 2012
A piece of Mars: I just adore that the wind can do this to a landscape. Over a long period of time, two different winds have scratched deep grooves in a rocky surface. Wind-carved rocks like this are called “yardangs”. […]
August 10, 2012
A piece of Gale crater, Mars: These are rocks on Mount Sharp, where the Curiosity rover will be headed in the coming months. Like many of the surfaces in Gale crater, these have been streamlined by sandblasting over the eons. […]
July 29, 2012
A piece of Mars: When the wind sandblasts at layered rocks, some pretty swirly patterns emerge. These are flat layers that take on a stacked wedding-cake appearance on an outcrop elongated by the wind. The direction of the stacks indicates […]
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 3, 2012
A piece of Mars: Bright rocks are being scoured and shaped by dark (bluish) sand. On Mars, active geologic activity is easy to identify: when there aren’t many craters visible, you’re probably looking at a surface that is undergoing change. […]