Above ground and underground Martian drainages
Cool image time! Today we are going to zoom into our cool image. The overview map to the right provides us the context. Our target is the small white rectangle inside the small box just below the north rim of 185-mile-wide Newton Crater, located 200 to 800 miles from the southwest edge of the lava plains dubbed Daedalia Planum that flowed down from Mars’s biggest volcanoes.
Newton Crater has a number of interesting features. Only two weeks ago I featured 4-mile-wide Avire Crater in Newton’s western quadrant, long known to have many gullies on its interior slopes as well as glacier features on its floor. Scientists have been monitoring those gullies now for more than a decade to see if they change seasonally, in a attempt to figure out their cause.
Today’s cool image looks at the very intriguing meandering canyons that appear to flow south from Newton’s north rim.
Click for full image.
Click for full image.
The first photo to the right was taken on March 17, 2014 by the wide-view context camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It covers the area of the small box in the overview above, and shows several of those meandering canyons, all of which strongly resemble river tributaries seen routinely on Earth. Unlike most Earth rivers, however, these canyons seem to begin very abruptly, rather than grow from tiny trickles into flowing rivers.
The second photo below is a MRO high resolution image, cropped and reduced to post here, that was taken on June 7, 2022. It covers the area in the white box on the context camera photo, and focuses in on the start of one of these canyons.
On Earth, such an abrupt beginning would suggest an underground resurgence in limestone or karst terrain. The water was flowing underground because limestone is essentially transparent to water. The water drops through it until it finds a more resistant layer, where it then flows sideways. When the surface exposes that layer, the flow appears as a spring or resurgence, and begins to flow along the surface.
It appears we have the same thing here, though no liquid water is presently visible. Nor is any obvious outlet visible at the canyon head. Instead it appears largely filled with Martian dust.
If you look very closely however at the overview map above, or zoom in on the context map at the link for the high resolution picture, you can see a much larger meandering canyon to the north and cutting through the eroded rim of Newton Crater. When it hits the crater floor it essentially vanishes.
If that larger northern canyon was formed by glacial ice or flowing water, these meandering smaller canyons to the south appear to be drainages that continue that southward flow. And the glacial evidence seen in Avire crater to the southwest inside Newton reinforces the possibility that these canyons are related to either glacial or liquid flows. The color strip in the hi-res image also reinforces this theory, as the blue colors in the canyon suggest [pdf] frost or ice, especially because the blue appears more intense on the north pole-facing cliffs.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Cool image time! Today we are going to zoom into our cool image. The overview map to the right provides us the context. Our target is the small white rectangle inside the small box just below the north rim of 185-mile-wide Newton Crater, located 200 to 800 miles from the southwest edge of the lava plains dubbed Daedalia Planum that flowed down from Mars’s biggest volcanoes.
Newton Crater has a number of interesting features. Only two weeks ago I featured 4-mile-wide Avire Crater in Newton’s western quadrant, long known to have many gullies on its interior slopes as well as glacier features on its floor. Scientists have been monitoring those gullies now for more than a decade to see if they change seasonally, in a attempt to figure out their cause.
Today’s cool image looks at the very intriguing meandering canyons that appear to flow south from Newton’s north rim.
Click for full image.
Click for full image.
The first photo to the right was taken on March 17, 2014 by the wide-view context camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It covers the area of the small box in the overview above, and shows several of those meandering canyons, all of which strongly resemble river tributaries seen routinely on Earth. Unlike most Earth rivers, however, these canyons seem to begin very abruptly, rather than grow from tiny trickles into flowing rivers.
The second photo below is a MRO high resolution image, cropped and reduced to post here, that was taken on June 7, 2022. It covers the area in the white box on the context camera photo, and focuses in on the start of one of these canyons.
On Earth, such an abrupt beginning would suggest an underground resurgence in limestone or karst terrain. The water was flowing underground because limestone is essentially transparent to water. The water drops through it until it finds a more resistant layer, where it then flows sideways. When the surface exposes that layer, the flow appears as a spring or resurgence, and begins to flow along the surface.
It appears we have the same thing here, though no liquid water is presently visible. Nor is any obvious outlet visible at the canyon head. Instead it appears largely filled with Martian dust.
If you look very closely however at the overview map above, or zoom in on the context map at the link for the high resolution picture, you can see a much larger meandering canyon to the north and cutting through the eroded rim of Newton Crater. When it hits the crater floor it essentially vanishes.
If that larger northern canyon was formed by glacial ice or flowing water, these meandering smaller canyons to the south appear to be drainages that continue that southward flow. And the glacial evidence seen in Avire crater to the southwest inside Newton reinforces the possibility that these canyons are related to either glacial or liquid flows. The color strip in the hi-res image also reinforces this theory, as the blue colors in the canyon suggest [pdf] frost or ice, especially because the blue appears more intense on the north pole-facing cliffs.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
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