Strange circular dunes on Mars spotted in these NASA photos
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Loading... - Daniella Chapman
- 10 Mar 2023
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The sand dunes were imaged as part of a program to see how frost melts on the Red Planet in late winter.
Planetary scientists have captured an image of near-perfectly circular sand dunes on the surface of Mars. While sand dunes across the Red Planet come in a wealth of shapes and sizes, such well-defined circles are unusual.
The slight asymmetry in the sand dunes shows their steep sides are orientated towards the south. The University of Arizona, which operates the High-Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRise) camera used to take the image, pointed out in a statement that this indicates sands are blown southwards, though the Martian winds may be variable.
The image was taken on November 22, 2022, at a latitude of 42.505 degrees and a longitude of 67.076 degrees. It comes as part of a series of pictures taken by the HiRise camera that orbits Mars on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft.
The collection of images is being used to monitor how frost recedes and melts on the Martian surface as the Red Planet reaches the end of its winter season. Illustrating this, while this image appears frost-free a similar image of the same sand dunes previously taken shows what they looked like while still covered in frost.
The sand dune image was taken while the MRO was at an altitude of around 185 miles (300 kilometers) over the Martian surface. Each pixel in the image represents 25 centimeters (9.8 inches).
This is just one of 60 sites on Mars being monitored by HiRise. The high-resolution camera has been orbiting the Red Planet since the MRO reached Mars in 2006 and began conducting the first dedicated survey of the planet's sand dunes. Read More…
