Get out your 3D spectacles! Hundreds of new red-cyan anaglyph images of Mars have been released by the HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Although other Mars missions have taken 3D images, HiRISE is the most powerful camera to ever orbit another planet. It resolves features as small as 1 metre across – roughly the scale of a person. Here are five of the most striking images.
Terby Crater is a 174-kilometre (108-mile) wide crater that sinks some 5 km (3 miles) into the Martian crust. It’s located on the northern rim of the large Hellas impact basin in the southern hemisphere of Mars and holds a wide range of landforms.
The mesa of layered deposits imaged here is located in the north-central part of the crater’s interior. Hydrated minerals, including hydrated sulphates and clays, have been detected in these layers, providing evidence that Terby and Hellas may once have held an enormous lake up to 3.6 km (2.2 miles) deep.
(Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)
First imaged by the Mariner 9 spacecraft in 1972, this enigmatic group of wind-eroded ridges covers 15 by 18 km (9 by 11 miles) of Pollack Crater’s floor. The feature’s higher reflectivity, or albedo – compared with the darker material on the crater’s floor – makes it appear white. In reality, White Rock has a dull, reddish colour and is likely composed of accumulated dust and sand with some fine-grained olivine (a volcanic mineral that degrades easily in water), surrounded by basaltic sand.
(Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)
These dark-toned, crescent-shaped dunes are located on the floor of Herschel Crater – a 300-km (186-mile) wide impact basin in the ancient, cratered southern highlands of Mars. Barchan, or crescent-shaped, dunes are formed by winds that blow mostly in one direction – the dunes’ “horns” point downwind. In this case, the strongest winds blow roughly north to south.
Herschel’s basaltic sand dunes appear to have a pitted and grooved texture, indicating that the dune sands may be cemented together, or lithified.
(Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)
Candor Chasma is a deep, elongated, steep-sided depression some 813 km (505 miles) long. It is one of two large canyons that make up the northern end of the Valles Marineris canyon system – the solar system’s grandest canyon. Horizontal layers of sand- and dust-sized particles have been folded to form intricate swirls and curves. The layers may have originally been laid down as sediments that accumulated in shallow lakes, since MRO’s CRISM spectrometer has found hydrated sulphates in Candor. The sedimentary layers were probably deformed later and eroded, exposing the elaborate patterns we see today.
(Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)
A variety of Martian craters
The upper-left may have formed when subsurface material, such as water, ice, or magma, was removed and the ground above collapsed. (upper right) appear more like ocean waves than ballistic spatter from an impact. The (lower right) was surrounded by vast lava flows that did not overtop the crater rim. Wind-blown deposits, likely volcanic ash, blanketed the region and filled the crater. (lower left) is a bowl-shaped impact crater in the northern lowlands.
(Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)
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