Tag: science

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Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 1, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled by the science team as showing “possible lava-ice interaction,” the photo features some pimply-looking mounds that, though round like craters, sit above the surrounding landscape like small volcanoes.

That these are likely not ancient pedestal impact craters that now sit higher because their material is packed and can resist erosion is illustrated by the bridge-like mound in the lower right. This mound was likely once solid, but its north and south sections have disappeared, either by erosion or sublimation. If formed by an impact the mound would have had a depression in its top center, and would have only eroded outside the rim.
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Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on June 8, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the top half of the northwestern interior wall of the central caldera of Pavonis Mons, the center volcano in the string of three giant volcanos found in Mars’ equatorial regions.

The elevation change from the top to the bottom of this picture is about 7,000 feet, though this covers only half the distance down to the floor of the caldera. The picture was taken as part of a survey of this caldera wall.

Volcanic activity here is thought to have ended more than a billion years ago. Thus we are looking at relatively old terrain that has had many eons to be reshaped since the last eruption.
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Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on August 22, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). I have also inserted data from a July 28, 2008 context camera image into the blank strip that now exists in the center of high resolution camera images due to the failure of one sensor.

This photo is what the camera team calls a terrain sample, and was probably taken not as part of any specific request but to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule in order to maintain its proper temperature. When the camera team does this they try to find locations that either have not been observed in much detail previously or have interesting features. In this case the team accomplished both. The interesting features are the two pedestal craters, both surrounded by splash aprons. Neither has been observed in high resolution previously, and the context camera has only taken two pictures of this location in total.
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Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 21, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissence Orbiter (MRO). Its focus is the meandering ridge in the center of the picture, which the scientists intentially describe vaguely as a “ridged flow-like feature”.

The elevation difference between the high and low points within the picture is about 500 feet, though most of that slope occurs in the lighter terrain on the right. The darker area where the ridge is located has no clear elevation trend, though there are hints of depressions and rises within it.

The yellow dot on the overview map above marks this location, deep within the chaos terrain dubbed Deuteronilus Mensae, on the western end of the 2,000 long northern mid-latitude strip I dub glacier country, because practially every image from there shows glacial features.

To underline this fact, the red and white dots mark previous cool images from 2020 and 2021, with the first showing an eroded glacier and the second glacial ice sheets.

The mesa to the east of this picture rises more than 6,000 feet to its peak, as indicated by the black dot. This is also the highest point for this entire grouping of mesas. All are surrounded by a single large apron of material, likely a mixture of alluvial fill and ice.

What however caused the narrow ridge in the picture above? Is it ice or bedrock? If ice why is it so different than the glacial material that seems to surround it? If bedrock, it suggests it is instead an ancient inverted channel created when that ridge was a canyon through which ice or water flowed, compacting the canyon floor. When the terrain around it eroded away it was more resistent and became a ridge instead.

I have no answer. The colors suggest the ridge is rock, not ice, but that is not conclusive.

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Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 24, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a lava flow that cut through an older 2-mile-wide crater, mostly burying it as it burst through the crater’s southwest and northeast rims. From the caption:

A lava channel extends from the feature and continues 60 kilometers to the northeast, growing deeper along its path. The circular formation is likely an eroded impact crater whose walls have been breached by the lava as it surrounded the rim and then infilled the crater. Alternatively, it could represent the location of a volcanic vent that sourced some of the lavas that formed the channel.

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Today’s cool image is a perfect example of why nothing in science research should ever be taken at face value, without digging a bit deeper. The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 5, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

First an important technical point. Though the electronics unit for one of the camera’s color filters is still not working — causing a blank strip down the center of all black & white images, the camera team has gotten around this problem by inserting in that strip other color filter data, thus creating a complete image as you see to the right. This work-around means that MRO’s capabilities, though showing signs of age, will continue almost as good as before.

As for the image itself, when I first looked at it, I was baffled by the striking contrast between the mottled and rough ground in the lower left, and the almost featureless and smooth terrain everywhere else. Why this sudden transition? What could cause it? That inexplicable contrast demanded I post it as a cool image.
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Cool image time (necessary when there is no real space news to report)! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 29, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label as “steep crater walls.”

And the interior slopes of this 5-mile-wide unnamed crater are steep, about 600 feet high and descending at a grade of 10 to 13 degrees, getting steeper as you go down. In fact, the floor of the crater itself continues that slope downward to the west until it reaches the base of its western interior wall. For some reason the glacial material within it is piled up higher on its eastern end.

The dark streaks on the crater interior walls are either slope streaks or recurring slope lineae, with the former appearing somewhat randomly and the latter seasonal in nature. Both remain unexplained unique phenomenons of Mars. This new picture was likely a follow-up of a January 2014 MRO picture to see if anything had changed in the past decade.

To my eye it is difficult to detect any changes, but I am not looking at the highest resolution version of the picture. The lack of changes suggests the streaks are seasonal lineae, as both images were taken in the northern spring and the streaks in both appear much the same.
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Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 16, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The science team describes this as “clusters of scour pits,” which means the pits here were formed by the prevailing winds, which according to a global analysis of dunes on Mars, is probably blowing from the west to the east at this location.

This image only covers a small section of these scour pits. The full field extends about 20 by 18 miles across, and appears to be the southeastern flank of a mile-high dome. The scour marks could therefore also be evidence of some sagging of this material downhill along that flank.

It is also possible that the flow of the prevailing winds across this southeastern downhill slope is causing the pit formation. Unlike this flank, the rest of this dome is relatively smooth.
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