Planet Four Talk

Maze of valeys

  • bigchill by bigchill

    This is an amazing image, would love to see a wider view to where these valleys are going to if anywhere?
    Are these valleys in the carbon dioxide ice, or is this the Mars surface its difficult to tell from the image. Is this a permanent ancient feature or does it get recreated every spring many questions!

    Posted

  • Portyankina by Portyankina scientist

    Hi!

    These valleys are in the solid martian surface, not in seasonal ice layer. They are rather old, our colleagues estimated that to form something like this takes 10^5 years. But this all scene is covered by the CO2 ice layer, which is transparent enough to see the underlying structure.
    If you want to see larger areas in HiRISE images. please do go to http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu - there are many-many complete images. you can search for features in upper right corner search box.
    Unfortunately, I do not know where from is this exact frame, our algorithm cuts huge images into parts and feeds you a part a time. This is done so that we don't have "favorite" locations and mark all of them evenly.

    Anya

    Posted