Meandering channels on Mars
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 2, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
The scientists describe this as “meandering channels,” which seems appropriate. The downhill grade here is to the southeast. In wider views these channels extend from the northwest to the southeast about 31 miles total (with this location near the center), with the total elevation loss about 3,000 feet.
Note the splash apron around the 4,500-foot-wide unnamed crater as well as how the largest channel seems to terminate suddenly at the crater. Though at first glance it appears this impact occurred after the channels, that some of the channels cut into that splash apron suggests otherwise.
The dot marked #1 on the overview map to the right marks the location, in the northwest quadrant of 185-mile-wide Newton Crater. This is the fourth cool image I have featured inside Newton, with the other three indicated by their own numbered dots:
- 2: August 17, 2022: Get above 30 degrees latitude on Mars and you can find ice everywhere
- 3: September 5, 2022: Gullies and glaciers in a crater on Mars
- 4: September 23, 2022: Above ground and underground Martian drainage
All four images suggest that the floor of Newton crater has a lot of near surface ice, causing these meandering channels sometime in the past as well as numerous other glacial features as well as erosion gullies. As this crater is at 39 degrees south latitude and directly inside the mid-latitude bands where many glacial features are found, this impression is reasonable.
In the case of today’s cool image, the stippled surface suggests that near-surface ice is sublimating away and causing the surface to roughen and erode. Whether the channels were formed by liquid water in the distance past or by glaciers more recently remains an unanswered question.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 2, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
The scientists describe this as “meandering channels,” which seems appropriate. The downhill grade here is to the southeast. In wider views these channels extend from the northwest to the southeast about 31 miles total (with this location near the center), with the total elevation loss about 3,000 feet.
Note the splash apron around the 4,500-foot-wide unnamed crater as well as how the largest channel seems to terminate suddenly at the crater. Though at first glance it appears this impact occurred after the channels, that some of the channels cut into that splash apron suggests otherwise.
The dot marked #1 on the overview map to the right marks the location, in the northwest quadrant of 185-mile-wide Newton Crater. This is the fourth cool image I have featured inside Newton, with the other three indicated by their own numbered dots:
- 2: August 17, 2022: Get above 30 degrees latitude on Mars and you can find ice everywhere
- 3: September 5, 2022: Gullies and glaciers in a crater on Mars
- 4: September 23, 2022: Above ground and underground Martian drainage
All four images suggest that the floor of Newton crater has a lot of near surface ice, causing these meandering channels sometime in the past as well as numerous other glacial features as well as erosion gullies. As this crater is at 39 degrees south latitude and directly inside the mid-latitude bands where many glacial features are found, this impression is reasonable.
In the case of today’s cool image, the stippled surface suggests that near-surface ice is sublimating away and causing the surface to roughen and erode. Whether the channels were formed by liquid water in the distance past or by glaciers more recently remains an unanswered question.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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