Martian pseudo-frost terrain
Click for original image.
Cool image time! It is always dangerous to come to any quick conclusions about what you see from pictures from another planet. The photograph to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 19, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows what at first glance looks like a surface similar to frosting seen on window panes on Earth in the winter, where water condensation freezes to form crystalline patterns.
Your first glance would be wrong. This terrain is about 120 miles north of the Martian equator, placing inside the dry equatorial regions where no near-surface ice is known to exist. If this geological feature is formed by the same condensation processes that create ice frost, then it must involve the deposition of some other type of material.
The explanation would also have to account for the change in the terrain, from finely patterned on the right to more crystalline on the left.
As always, a wider look helps provide a possible explanation. The white dot on the overview map to the right marks this location, on the eastern rim of what appears to be a 27-mile-wide impact crater. Except it isn’t an impact crater, but the caldera of a very indistinct shield volcano in the large Arabia Terra region, the largest Martian transitional zone between the cratered southern highlands and the northern lowland plains.
The reason I think this is a caldera is that, in looking at a MRO context camera image, it appears that a lava flow descended to the north from this crater. Either way, the pseudo-frost appears to be heavily eroded lava that either eroded to look like this or froze in these patterns and was afterward revealed by erosion. The change in the surface pattern appears to be from greater erosion to the west, which stripped off more of the top layer of lava.
The crystalline pattern however suggests a very intriguing geology, possibly some form of mineralization. From a resource perspective this location might be worth a closer look, as it might contain something worth mining.
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! It is always dangerous to come to any quick conclusions about what you see from pictures from another planet. The photograph to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 19, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows what at first glance looks like a surface similar to frosting seen on window panes on Earth in the winter, where water condensation freezes to form crystalline patterns.
Your first glance would be wrong. This terrain is about 120 miles north of the Martian equator, placing inside the dry equatorial regions where no near-surface ice is known to exist. If this geological feature is formed by the same condensation processes that create ice frost, then it must involve the deposition of some other type of material.
The explanation would also have to account for the change in the terrain, from finely patterned on the right to more crystalline on the left.
As always, a wider look helps provide a possible explanation. The white dot on the overview map to the right marks this location, on the eastern rim of what appears to be a 27-mile-wide impact crater. Except it isn’t an impact crater, but the caldera of a very indistinct shield volcano in the large Arabia Terra region, the largest Martian transitional zone between the cratered southern highlands and the northern lowland plains.
The reason I think this is a caldera is that, in looking at a MRO context camera image, it appears that a lava flow descended to the north from this crater. Either way, the pseudo-frost appears to be heavily eroded lava that either eroded to look like this or froze in these patterns and was afterward revealed by erosion. The change in the surface pattern appears to be from greater erosion to the west, which stripped off more of the top layer of lava.
The crystalline pattern however suggests a very intriguing geology, possibly some form of mineralization. From a resource perspective this location might be worth a closer look, as it might contain something worth mining.
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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