The HiRISE camera onboard Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter keeps churning out incredible images of Mars. This one is very cool, but it’s not obvious why at a glance:
I had to look at it for a moment to realize how amazing it is: there is a scarp (very steep and tall cliff) going across the bottom right corner, and it’s the shadow of that scarp cutting across the image that suddenly gives you a sense of looking right down a cliff.
Yowza. The full view is beautiful as well.
Also, check out the boulder race on Mars! Some of my favorite images are ones that imply (or show direct evidence of) motion. Mars is still a dynamic planet.
April 17th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
And thus is born my new desktop background.
Spectacular! I loves me some Hirise!
April 17th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
What’s making the soil look blue?
April 17th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
How about an entire herd of giant glass worms?
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_001736_2605
April 17th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
I liked that one too, but ultimately on my desktop it looked like a picture of a brain… a little creepy, so I took it off.
April 17th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Danny, the soil looks blue because that’s a false-color image. These colours have been used aplenty in recent Mars imagery to highlight differences in geology.
In this case, blue seems to indicate sand. Which in reality is just as orange as almost everything else on Mars.
April 17th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Lies! That’s the beach near San Juan Capistrano! I can see the swallows.
What’s making the soil look blue?
Blue meanies.
http://www.yellowsubmariner.com/blue_meanies.jpg
April 17th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Very interesting. If you look carefully you can see the face of Jesus. And a toast. And the face of Jesus on the toast.
April 17th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Wow, this image however is a great candidate for pareidolia. If I really want to I can easily make out a beautiful beachhead there. The cliff is some recently wet sand(thus the different color), the white stuff in the very lower right is water retreating into the ocean, and the dunes in the middle are actually just marks from last nights high tide. Ahh… if only that were true.
April 17th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
I see ancient ruins!
Who am I?
April 17th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
I see nothing. What on earths (or mars) is a .jnlp file? How do you grab the high res copy?
April 17th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Never mind, found some links to other things that turned out to be the first thing!
April 17th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
I think it would be awesome if someone would develop an “Age of Empires”-type game in which you could edit the terrain (as you can in Age of Empires) to have Mars-like textures, with scarps and craters and stuff. I’d buy that. Then I’d wipe out the Martian civilizations with my rocket-powered chariots.
April 17th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Spectacular. It almost looks like vegetation.
April 17th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Excellent.
In the full image to which you link, BA, is the white material near the bottom of the image carbon dioxide frost? If so, that would be so cool!
April 17th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
If you look really closely, you can see the outline of a coyote plummeting towards the bottom of the cliff.
Seriously, keep the excellent images coming.
April 18th, 2008 at 1:28 am
There is the clear outline of a Roman fort at 0.8E,0.1N relative to bottom left. Two good rightangles and a gatehouse- slightly off centre, but not bad – one of Publius Quinctilius Varus’ lost legions?
April 18th, 2008 at 11:13 am
I see dead people.
April 22nd, 2008 at 1:28 am
Amazing! So close to home (and so similar), yet so far away. Love to go there someday.