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Subscribe to RSSThe team managing the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter stitched together this groovy video from that latest release of imagery.
The HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter consistently beams down mesmerizing high-resolution images of the Red Planet. Now, the scientists who study the images have stitched together the latest public release into this cool video set to a groovy "Sanskrit" tune they grabbed from Apple's GarageBand. Let's take a virtual tour ...
NASA / JPL / University of Arizona
Sinuous ridges in the Aeolis / Zephyria region
The video starts with a flyover of sinuous ridges in the Aeolis/Zephyria Region. The reason these ridges look like an inverted river bed is because that's what they probably are, HiRISE team member Ross Beyer from NASA Ames Research Center explains in his commentary on the imagery.
Sometime in the distant past, lava flowed down a meandering river a channel and hardened on the bed. Then, the river dried and the surrounding landscape eroded, leaving raised river bed of hardened lava. "We can study these ridges to try and determine how much water might have flowed through this system," he writes.
NASA / JPL / University of Arizona
Pits on Mars' South Pole make what look like a deranged happy face.
Next up is the Martian south pole, where the pitted landscape is nicknamed "Swiss cheese terrain." Scientists are monitoring the residual carbon dioxide there to see how it changes over time. One spot they routinely check looks like a deranged happy face. Compared to 2007 images of the spot, the pits have grown larger.
The growth of the pits was originally thought to be a sign of climate change on Mars, but scientists now think the carbon dioxide that goes from solid to gas in the pits recondenses on nearby surfaces, so there's no net change in carbon dioxide, according to Alfred McEwen, principal investigator for HiRISE at the University of Arizona.
NASA / JPL / University of Arizona
A highly-elliptical crater chain on Mars was likely formed as an impacting space rock came down nearly parallel to the surface.
Moving along, the video takes us to an unusual elliptical impact crater, which upon closer examination appears to be the result of overlapping craters that formed simultaneously along with several smaller craters. McEwen explains in his commentary that such crater chains can form when the impacting space rock trajectory is almost parallel to the surface.
NASA / JPL / University of Arizona
Ravines, or gullies, on Mars were likely modified by glacial flows.
The eye candy continues with what are called giant gullies in the Hellas Montes region. The gullies are more like ravines that have been covered or modified by glacial flows, McEwen explains.
NASA / JPL / University of Arizona
These sinuous ridges on Mars might be erosional remnants of flow ejecta from ancient impact craters.
The final stop in this groovy tour of Mars is more sinuous ridges, this time in the North Syrtis Major Region. But instead of inverted stream channels, these ridges may be erosional remnants from material ejected from ancient impact craters, McEwen suggests. "In either case the landscape is differentially eroded, and more erosion-resistant materials cap high-standing topography," he writes.
More HiRISE eye candy:
- Amazing! Mars orbiter gets a fix on lander
- Mystery sand ripples on Mars explained
- New Mars orbiter sends its first pictures
- Good moves on Mars
- Mars orbiter spots rover's landing site
John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).
Leave a Comment:
Wow! those pictures are amazing.. it was like flying at twenty thousand feet and looking out the window... maybe even lower... as a kid I always wondered what it would look like .. now I know.
Why are the pictures so blue? Are they all of polar ice caps?
Mike, Since I am not a part of the team brining you the pictures I can only speculate. The satelite that takes the pictures may be tilted more towards the ultra-violet range of the light spectrum. This would cause all the pictures to have a blue tinge.
LL
Love the music - I kept looking for camels striding across the surface of this desert terrain.
It's east indian music, not arabian knights.
What? The music seems completely out of place. Ridiculous.
Mike, From Wickipedia, "HiRISE collects images in three color bands, 400 to 600 nm (blue-green or B-G), 550 to 850 nm (red) and 800 to 1,000 nm (near infrared or NIR)." If the blue tinged photos were taken in the first band, the 400 to 600 nm band the picture would have a blue ting. Had the picture been taken in the other bands the picture would be progressively more red.
LL
The only 'deranged happy face' is the simple-minded American taxpayers who send their last life savings off to the 'Right Schtuff' for their planned one-way TEN TRILLION DOLLAR suiucide mission to Mars, the Daed Planet. If you had told 46,000,000 unemployed and homeless Okies in Great Depression One, that you were going to shoot TEN TRILLION DOLLARS into the blue, they'd've eaten you for lunch, with fava beans and a nice Chianti. The Hooror! The Hooror!.... WA DC and Alexandria, VA, our Black Hole of USAs Triumphal Exceptionist Universe.
Fantastic.
BUT .... every scene needs a scale ruler ... in order to interpret what we are looking at. That would be it all so much better.
Yes, I agree with Howard. "What is the scale" I kept saying to myself. Temperature would help too.
Nothing new...after some 10 years plus of mars imaging, the impact has weakened with me.
That comment reminds me of the apocryphal story of the Patent Office needing to be closed because everything that had been discovered had already been patented.
these images are pretty boring. and the music is weak. these people need to hire a pr firm to sex up mars because it just ain't happening for me at this point