A field of Martian knobs
Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on August 9, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Uncaptioned, the image is merely dubbed a “knob field.”
I won’t spend much time trying to explain this geology. It might be related to pedestal craters, but these ridges and mesas don’t really look like those features, since they don’t really stand above the surrounding terrain.
Maybe they are a very ancient field of craters long buried, now partly exposed due to erosion, but also partly buried by wind-blown Martian sand and dust. Once again, that many of their shapes don’t resemble craters discounts this explanation.
The location of this photo is in the southern cratered highlands, as shown by the black cross in the overview map below.
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Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on August 9, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Uncaptioned, the image is merely dubbed a “knob field.”
I won’t spend much time trying to explain this geology. It might be related to pedestal craters, but these ridges and mesas don’t really look like those features, since they don’t really stand above the surrounding terrain.
Maybe they are a very ancient field of craters long buried, now partly exposed due to erosion, but also partly buried by wind-blown Martian sand and dust. Once again, that many of their shapes don’t resemble craters discounts this explanation.
The location of this photo is in the southern cratered highlands, as shown by the black cross in the overview map below.
» Read more