Thick flow exiting dramatic canyon on Mars
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on July 24, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label as a “viscous flow” that has apparently carved the wide curving canyon as it slowly flows into open country to the south.
I would estimate the height of that canyon wall to be around 3,000 feet, though this is a very rough guess. I also image a trail switchbacking up the nose of that canyon wall would make for a truly stupendous hiking experience.
The flow filling the canyon floor appears very glacial, which is not surprising as this canyon is at 37 degrees north latitude, in the mid-latitude band where many glacial features are found. The overview map below provides some more detailed context.
The black dot, top center, marks this canyon’s location, a small side canyon draining from the north into the much wider Mamers Valles system that meanders 600 miles from the interior of Arabia Terra into the northern lowland plains of Mars. This canyon system also sits on the western end of the 2,000 long mid-latitude strip I dub glacier country, because almost every high resolution image — like this one — shows glacial features.
Mamers Valles itself appears to be filled with its own much larger glacial flow, as two earlier cool images have documented (here and here).
Some scientists have hypothesized that this meandering canyon includes many underground drainages, which have acted to create the canyon when the voids below caused the surface to sink.
To my eye, the image above does not support that theory. Nothing in this picture suggests surface slumping, in any way. Instead, the glacial flow clearly looks like it has created the canyon, on the surface, over the eons.
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 or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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 full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on July 24, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label as a “viscous flow” that has apparently carved the wide curving canyon as it slowly flows into open country to the south.
I would estimate the height of that canyon wall to be around 3,000 feet, though this is a very rough guess. I also image a trail switchbacking up the nose of that canyon wall would make for a truly stupendous hiking experience.
The flow filling the canyon floor appears very glacial, which is not surprising as this canyon is at 37 degrees north latitude, in the mid-latitude band where many glacial features are found. The overview map below provides some more detailed context.
The black dot, top center, marks this canyon’s location, a small side canyon draining from the north into the much wider Mamers Valles system that meanders 600 miles from the interior of Arabia Terra into the northern lowland plains of Mars. This canyon system also sits on the western end of the 2,000 long mid-latitude strip I dub glacier country, because almost every high resolution image — like this one — shows glacial features.
Mamers Valles itself appears to be filled with its own much larger glacial flow, as two earlier cool images have documented (here and here).
Some scientists have hypothesized that this meandering canyon includes many underground drainages, which have acted to create the canyon when the voids below caused the surface to sink.
To my eye, the image above does not support that theory. Nothing in this picture suggests surface slumping, in any way. Instead, the glacial flow clearly looks like it has created the canyon, on the surface, over the eons.
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 or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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
I have always wondered what it has been about Nature/the Universe that it has operated almost all of the time without witnesses.
It’s almost as if the Universe doesn’t really need us.
Yet, in has allowed the existence of pond scum.