Dendritic features and "straight line" features
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by
bleighuk
Many of the images we get show a great many dendritic features sometimes looking like natural "water courses" and other times looking almost like the remains of some ordered structure. I wonder what causes this. There is no means of classifying these with the given classifications.
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by
mschwamb
scientist, translator
Nicely spotted. Those are channels. They are carved into the surface of Mars by carbon dioxide gas trapped under the thawing carbon dioxide ice sheet on the south pole of Mars. You can learn more about what these features are here and here.
You're absolutely right about not having an ability to classify those dendrite-like channels right now. The plan is run a version 2.0 of the project where we have volunteers characterize the different types and patterns of spider-like channels in the images.
Cheers,
~Meg
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