Endless dunes amidst Mars’ giant volcanoes
Click for originial image.
Past cool images on Behind the Black showing endless dune fields on Mars have generally focused on two places, the giant Medusae Fossae Formation volcanic ash deposits in the dry equatorial regions of Mars and the Olympia Undae dune sea that surrounds the Martian north pole.
Today’s image to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, takes us to a completely different dune sea. Taken on February 14, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), the picture also shows an endless dune sea, though there is faint evidence on those dune fields of buried features, such as the meandering east-west feature in the picture’s center.
This dune sea is also in the dry equatorial regions, like Medusae, but it is much farther east, and sits surrounded by Mars’ biggest volcanoes.
The white dot south of Olympus Mons and west of the three other great volcanoes marks the location of this picture. The white box outlines the whole dune field itself, which is about 100 miles long its greatest cross section.
A MRO context camera image taken on January 3, 2010 covers about two-thirds of this entire dune field, revealing its almost level nature. Except for the dunes, the terrain here is almost as flat as a tabletop. That flatness suggests strongly that we are looking at a lava flood plain which had poured out from one of the nearby giant volcanoes, or from the large fissure vents to the southwest and and northeast.
The sand dune sea was probably deposited later, and is likely made up of volcanic ash from those eruptions, or volcanic dust eroded off the lava by wind over the eons. Whether those dunes are now solid and unmoving, or still made of dust that are shifted over time by the wind, is probably the main scientific question that needs answering. Since this however is the first high resolution image taken of this entire dune field, that question cannot yet be answered, because we don’t yet have comparison images over time.
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 originial image.
Past cool images on Behind the Black showing endless dune fields on Mars have generally focused on two places, the giant Medusae Fossae Formation volcanic ash deposits in the dry equatorial regions of Mars and the Olympia Undae dune sea that surrounds the Martian north pole.
Today’s image to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, takes us to a completely different dune sea. Taken on February 14, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), the picture also shows an endless dune sea, though there is faint evidence on those dune fields of buried features, such as the meandering east-west feature in the picture’s center.
This dune sea is also in the dry equatorial regions, like Medusae, but it is much farther east, and sits surrounded by Mars’ biggest volcanoes.
The white dot south of Olympus Mons and west of the three other great volcanoes marks the location of this picture. The white box outlines the whole dune field itself, which is about 100 miles long its greatest cross section.
A MRO context camera image taken on January 3, 2010 covers about two-thirds of this entire dune field, revealing its almost level nature. Except for the dunes, the terrain here is almost as flat as a tabletop. That flatness suggests strongly that we are looking at a lava flood plain which had poured out from one of the nearby giant volcanoes, or from the large fissure vents to the southwest and and northeast.
The sand dune sea was probably deposited later, and is likely made up of volcanic ash from those eruptions, or volcanic dust eroded off the lava by wind over the eons. Whether those dunes are now solid and unmoving, or still made of dust that are shifted over time by the wind, is probably the main scientific question that needs answering. Since this however is the first high resolution image taken of this entire dune field, that question cannot yet be answered, because we don’t yet have comparison images over time.
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
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