Mars’ youngest lava flow
Click for full image.
Today’s cool image is in some ways another version of my last cool image yesterday. Both are in Mars’s volcano country. Both show what appears to be a lava flow.
Yesterday’s image showed the leftover evidence of a confined flow of lava running in a meandering pattern like a river, and was somewhat distant from the biggest nearby volcanoes. Today’s cool image, to the right and rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, is instead located smack dab on the inside of what is thought to be Mars’ youngest major lava event, the Athabasca flood lava plain, and in fact is near its outlet, when about 600 million years ago it belched out enough lava in just a matter of a few weeks to cover an area about the size of Great Britain.
The overview map below illustrates this.
The white dot marks the location. The northeast-to-southeast alignment of the parallel ridges also points directly back to the Athabasca outlet, coming from the southwest base of the nearest mountain chain to the northeast. The picture itself was taken on November 6, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. It also shows that these parallel ridges cover a much larger area, and are actually part of a very wider flow that is clearly visible in wide MRO context camera images. If you look at the top half of this context camera picture, taken November 3, 2011, you can see that flow. It surrounded and passed a crater to the northeast, and then rushed downhill to the southwest, leaving these parallel ridges behind as evidence of that flow.
The purple-shaded area shows the full extent of the Athabasca flood plain. After traveling to the southwest it apparently split into two tributaries, with the bulk of the lava heading to the west.
One last note: The two small dark splotches on the image are likely relatively recent impacts that have not faded yet, as they usually do within a few Martian years.
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 full image.
Today’s cool image is in some ways another version of my last cool image yesterday. Both are in Mars’s volcano country. Both show what appears to be a lava flow.
Yesterday’s image showed the leftover evidence of a confined flow of lava running in a meandering pattern like a river, and was somewhat distant from the biggest nearby volcanoes. Today’s cool image, to the right and rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, is instead located smack dab on the inside of what is thought to be Mars’ youngest major lava event, the Athabasca flood lava plain, and in fact is near its outlet, when about 600 million years ago it belched out enough lava in just a matter of a few weeks to cover an area about the size of Great Britain.
The overview map below illustrates this.
The white dot marks the location. The northeast-to-southeast alignment of the parallel ridges also points directly back to the Athabasca outlet, coming from the southwest base of the nearest mountain chain to the northeast. The picture itself was taken on November 6, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. It also shows that these parallel ridges cover a much larger area, and are actually part of a very wider flow that is clearly visible in wide MRO context camera images. If you look at the top half of this context camera picture, taken November 3, 2011, you can see that flow. It surrounded and passed a crater to the northeast, and then rushed downhill to the southwest, leaving these parallel ridges behind as evidence of that flow.
The purple-shaded area shows the full extent of the Athabasca flood plain. After traveling to the southwest it apparently split into two tributaries, with the bulk of the lava heading to the west.
One last note: The two small dark splotches on the image are likely relatively recent impacts that have not faded yet, as they usually do within a few Martian years.
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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