barchan
May 1, 2017
A Piece of Mars: You’ll probably want to click on this image to see the whole thing, it’s pretty big, and it’s worth seeing. This 850×550 m (0.53×0.34 mi) scene shows the barchanoid dunes of the Bagnold dune field, imperceptibly […]
April 3, 2017
A Piece of Mars: This 0.48×0.27 km (0.3×0.17 mi) scene shows a rotund barchan dune. Can you tell from looking at it where on Mars it might be? To me the most obvious feature are the bumpy piles at the […]
September 5, 2016
A Piece of Mars: Barchan dunes on Mars have a characteristic crescent shape, with a steep slope (“slip face”) on the inside of the sharpest curve (see examples like this, this, these, or this). This image (873×491 m, or 0.54×0.31 […]
June 6, 2016
A Piece of Mars: Not all dunes on Mars are moving at a measurable pace. This 0.96×0.45 km (0.6×0.28 mi) scene looks a lot like one I posted 3 years ago called Martian Sports. This image shows the same dunes […]
October 5, 2015
A Piece of Mars: The dark dunes in this 0.96×0.54 km (0.60×0.34 mi) scene are slowly migrating towards the lower left. Look closer and you’ll see brighter ripples between the dunes – the biggest ones are ~8m (26 ft) apart. […]
July 27, 2015
A piece of Mars: So much wind. There are dark swirly tracks of dust devils that have passed by, ripples covering dunes, wind scours around rocks, and of course dunes. Dune crests have a different color than other regions: are […]
June 1, 2015
A piece of Mars: These dunes are some of the smallest on Mars. The smallest in this frame is ~150 m long (492 ft). But the smallest Earth dunes are ~20 m across. Why are they so much bigger on […]
July 22, 2014
A piece of Mars: Last December I blogged about a picture of a sand dune taken in early northern spring. This is the same dune, without frost, now that summer has come to the northern hemisphere and all the frost […]
June 13, 2014
A piece of Mars: Which way did the wind blow here? You can tell by looking at the dune and its ripples. The slip face (the avalanching slope of the dune) faces downwind, so the strongest wind here mainly blows […]
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 […]
October 25, 2013
A piece of Mars: Barchan, or crescent dunes, are generally thought to form from winds blowing from a single direction. Reality isn’t usually that nice. Here are two barchans with crescent-shaped slip faces on their eastern (right) sides, indicating that […]
September 4, 2013
A piece of Mars: In the center are two dark dunes, racing one another to jump over hurdles formed of older, now inactive dunes (or maybe those bright things are ripples, we still don’t know for sure). The dune in […]