A Martian slope streak caused by a dust devil?
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped, sharpened, and enhanced to post here, was taken on January 5, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the interior slope of an unnamed 9-mile-wide crater, located just south of the Martian equator.
On that slope are several slope streaks, their dark color suggesting they are relatively recent. Also on that slope is the track of a dust devil that traversed that across slope. The track and the top of one of those streaks match, suggesting the dust devil might have caused the streak.
Did it? Maybe. This image was certainly taken to try to find out. Right now scientists do not know what causes slope streaks, a phenomenon unique to Mars. Though they look like avalanches, they do not change the topography at all, and sometimes flow over rises. If anything, they appear to be a stain on the surface, caused by some unknown process.
The white dot near the center of the overview map to the right, just outside the Medusae Fossae Formation of volcanic dust, marks the location of this crater. Its nearness to the thick ash of Medusae is likely the source of the thick dust on this crater’s interior slope, as well as the streaks, since slope streaks are only found on slopes with layers of very fine dust.
If the dust devil did cause the streak, it might eliminate at least one theory as to their formation, which posits that the morning sunlight in equatorial regions causes them.
Or not. Maybe the streaks are caused by more than one phenomenon. Since we at present don’t know the process that forms them, it is difficult to then theorize about the specific event that generates them.
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 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 photo to the right, cropped, sharpened, and enhanced to post here, was taken on January 5, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the interior slope of an unnamed 9-mile-wide crater, located just south of the Martian equator.
On that slope are several slope streaks, their dark color suggesting they are relatively recent. Also on that slope is the track of a dust devil that traversed that across slope. The track and the top of one of those streaks match, suggesting the dust devil might have caused the streak.
Did it? Maybe. This image was certainly taken to try to find out. Right now scientists do not know what causes slope streaks, a phenomenon unique to Mars. Though they look like avalanches, they do not change the topography at all, and sometimes flow over rises. If anything, they appear to be a stain on the surface, caused by some unknown process.
The white dot near the center of the overview map to the right, just outside the Medusae Fossae Formation of volcanic dust, marks the location of this crater. Its nearness to the thick ash of Medusae is likely the source of the thick dust on this crater’s interior slope, as well as the streaks, since slope streaks are only found on slopes with layers of very fine dust.
If the dust devil did cause the streak, it might eliminate at least one theory as to their formation, which posits that the morning sunlight in equatorial regions causes them.
Or not. Maybe the streaks are caused by more than one phenomenon. Since we at present don’t know the process that forms them, it is difficult to then theorize about the specific event that generates them.
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 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
Have you ever seen a Dust Devil? I Have and according to the Indians its either good or evil depending upon which way its Spinning/Rotating