More strange terrain in the Martian “Death Valley”
Click for full image.
Today’s cool image, rotated cropped, and reduced to post here, might show what the science team for the high resolution camera of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have labeled “strange banded terrain”, but anyone who has spent any time perusing images of Hellas Basin, what I have labeled the basement of Mars because it has the lowest elevation on the planet, will recognize the features.
They might be inexplicable, but for Hellas Basin they are entirely familiar. Just take a look at some of my earlier posts:
- The basement of Mars
- Inexplicable ridges on Mars
- Terraced and banded hills on Mars
- The strange squashed ridges at the basement of Mars
All show some variation of these same kind of inexplicable bands or layers or terraces. In this case I especially like the look of the bands in the lower right. They look like someone took a grinder to them to smooth them out so that the high points are all plateaued at the same elevation.
The overview map indicates with the white cross the location of this particular banded terrain, in the southwest corner of the basin. As I noted in a previous post,
To my eye it often invokes a feeling that we are looking at Mars’s “uttermost foundation of stone” (to quote Tolkien), frozen lava that flowed in many ways and then froze in strange patterns.
Then again, we might instead be looking at evidence of past glacial activity, or a combination of glacial and volcanic activity. Or none of the above. Mars is alien and strange, and we must never be surprised when it does not fit our preconceived notions.
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 print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
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, rotated cropped, and reduced to post here, might show what the science team for the high resolution camera of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have labeled “strange banded terrain”, but anyone who has spent any time perusing images of Hellas Basin, what I have labeled the basement of Mars because it has the lowest elevation on the planet, will recognize the features.
They might be inexplicable, but for Hellas Basin they are entirely familiar. Just take a look at some of my earlier posts:
- The basement of Mars
- Inexplicable ridges on Mars
- Terraced and banded hills on Mars
- The strange squashed ridges at the basement of Mars
All show some variation of these same kind of inexplicable bands or layers or terraces. In this case I especially like the look of the bands in the lower right. They look like someone took a grinder to them to smooth them out so that the high points are all plateaued at the same elevation.
The overview map indicates with the white cross the location of this particular banded terrain, in the southwest corner of the basin. As I noted in a previous post,
To my eye it often invokes a feeling that we are looking at Mars’s “uttermost foundation of stone” (to quote Tolkien), frozen lava that flowed in many ways and then froze in strange patterns.
Then again, we might instead be looking at evidence of past glacial activity, or a combination of glacial and volcanic activity. Or none of the above. Mars is alien and strange, and we must never be surprised when it does not fit our preconceived notions.
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 print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. 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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