Posts Tagged ‘slot canyon’

Festival #2

Tuesday, March 11th, 2008

Here are 66 false-color images from the 1400 orbit range.

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PSP_001406_2680 looks like the higher relief was saturated (too bright for the camera settings), possibly due to CO2 frost cover.

PSP_001432_2015 is really cool; it’s on the edge of Olympus Mons, on the steep scarp leading to the much more gradual rise of the shield volcano. The rippled rolling dunes in PSP_001432_2610 are in striking contrast to the rocky floors between them. Check out the amazing slot canyons fractures along the left side in PSP_001440_2175.

The atmospheric haze in PSP_001444_2610 is incredible, though it does screw up the color registration on the bottom half of the image. This is 30 degrees East of the aforementioned dune location, but the same type of terrain. On some of these images, there will be CTX (Context camera) images. With similar haze conditions, over on UnmannedSpaceflight.com, Nirgal shows a colorized CTX image from MRO orbit 3624 for which there is a HiRISE view.

There are so many other great images in this set. The Holden Crater image deserves special mention. This area is on the candidate list for MSL, as mentioned in a previous post. A stereo print was made of this region at about the same resolution you see here; it was amazingly sharp, like looking into a scale model or diorama.

Again, feel free to post your favorites here in the comments.

Updated (2008-Apr-10)

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