A high mountain inside Valles Marineris
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and annotated to post here, was taken on January 4, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the flat top of a mountain inside Candor Chasma, one of the side canyons of the solar system’s largest canyon, Valles Marineris.
The image was taken when the sun was about 32 degrees above the horizon, to the west, and thus apparently low enough to put the flat top mostly in shadow.
What is most spectacular about this photo is the sense of scale it portrays once you know the overall context. Note the many layered slope to the west. That slope will continue downward far beyond the left edge of this image, dropping for dozens of miles and about 13,000 feet. The overview map below makes this clearer.
The black dot inside the inset box marks the location of the photo above, with the inset focusing on this mountain itself. Though the western slope drops about 13,000 feet, the southeastern slope drops even further, about 23,000 feet, or only about 6,000 feet below the height of Mount Everest and comparable to many of the Earth’s largest peaks. Moreover, this large drop is almost completely vertical. Talk about a wall that climbers will want to conquer!
Even so, the peak of this mountain, dubbed Candor Mensa, still sits below the canyon’s rim by more than six thousand feet. To stand on its flat peak would give you a view of the central, widest area of Valles Marineris — about 400 miles wide if you include both Melas and Candor — that would be unparalleled.
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 full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and annotated to post here, was taken on January 4, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the flat top of a mountain inside Candor Chasma, one of the side canyons of the solar system’s largest canyon, Valles Marineris.
The image was taken when the sun was about 32 degrees above the horizon, to the west, and thus apparently low enough to put the flat top mostly in shadow.
What is most spectacular about this photo is the sense of scale it portrays once you know the overall context. Note the many layered slope to the west. That slope will continue downward far beyond the left edge of this image, dropping for dozens of miles and about 13,000 feet. The overview map below makes this clearer.
The black dot inside the inset box marks the location of the photo above, with the inset focusing on this mountain itself. Though the western slope drops about 13,000 feet, the southeastern slope drops even further, about 23,000 feet, or only about 6,000 feet below the height of Mount Everest and comparable to many of the Earth’s largest peaks. Moreover, this large drop is almost completely vertical. Talk about a wall that climbers will want to conquer!
Even so, the peak of this mountain, dubbed Candor Mensa, still sits below the canyon’s rim by more than six thousand feet. To stand on its flat peak would give you a view of the central, widest area of Valles Marineris — about 400 miles wide if you include both Melas and Candor — that would be unparalleled.
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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