Did the wind change direction?
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by
Scummer80
I know the point of Planet Four is to try to understand the weather processes on Mars, but does anyone yet know why the dust fans are sometimes angular? The big one in the middle of this picture seems to have a sudden bend in its right edge. Is it possible that the wind changed direction suddenly before all the dust had touched down?
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mschwamb
scientist, translator
I'm not sure. Perhaps maybe there was a fan and then a blotch formed later on but the two looked merged or possibly varying amount of material coming out from the geyser with different wind speeds., but I'm speculating here.
Cheers,
~Meg
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by
p.titchin
in response to mschwamb's comment.
How about a second or adjacent vent with different pressure sent up material close to the first, ( or the other way round). The overlap of the two deposits with the wind the same would give these overlaps with apparent shape changes on the mutual edge? Otherwise, so many scenarios would give this. Gut feeling, normal overlaps, but ??? Nice boulders though! 😃
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wassock
moderator
Looking at the whole HiRise image there are an awful lot of these in this area and they are generally asymmetrical about the axis, so it looks like there's generally 2 fans in there one larger than the other. The fan running into a blotch idea looks like a non-started as there are so many of them.
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