Bedrock Exhumed from the Deep
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona
Bedrock Exhumed from the Deep
ESP_011523_1695  Science Theme: Geologic Contacts/Stratigraphy
Roadside bedrock outcrops are all too familiar for many who have taken a long road trip through mountainous areas on Earth. Martian craters provide what tectonic mountain building and man’s TNT cannot: crater-exposed bedrock outcrops.

Although crater and valley walls offer us roadside-like outcrops from just below the Martian surface, their geometry is not always conducive to orbital views. On the other hand, a crater central peak—a collection of mountainous rocks that have been brought up from depth, but also rotated and jumbled during the cratering process—produce some of the most spectacular views of bedrock from orbit.

This color composite cutout shows an example of such bedrock that may originate from as deep as 2 miles beneath the surface. The bedrock at this scale is does not appear to be layered or made up of grains, but has a massive appearance riddled with cross-cutting fractures, some of which have been filled by dark materials and rock fragments (impact melt and breccias) generated by the impact event. A close inspection of the image shows that these light-toned bedrock blocks are partially to fully covered by sand dunes and coated with impact melt bearing breccia flows.

Written by: Livio Leonardo Tornabene  (18 January 2017)

This is a stereo pair with ESP_012367_1695.
 
Acquisition date
10 January 2009

Local Mars time
15:51

Latitude (centered)
-10.564°

Longitude (East)
123.120°

Spacecraft altitude
260.2 km (161.7 miles)

Original image scale range
26.0 cm/pixel (with 1 x 1 binning) so objects ~78 cm across are resolved

Map projected scale
25 cm/pixel and North is up

Map projection
Equirectangular

Emission angle
0.8°

Phase angle
58.6°

Solar incidence angle
58°, with the Sun about 32° above the horizon

Solar longitude
188.9°, Northern Autumn

For non-map projected images
North azimuth:  97°
Sub-solar azimuth:  7.2°
JPEG
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non-map           (405MB)

IRB color
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non-map           (324MB)

Merged IRB
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RGB color
non map           (343MB)
ANAGLYPHS
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Full resolution JP2 download
Anaglyph details page

DIGITAL TERRAIN MODEL (DTM)
DTM details page

BONUS
4K (TIFF)
8K (TIFF)

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
B&W label
Color label
Merged IRB label
Merged RGB label
EDR products
HiView

NB
IRB: infrared-red-blue
RGB: red-green-blue
About color products (PDF)

Black & white is 5 km across; enhanced color about 1 km
For scale, use JPEG/JP2 black & white map-projected images

USAGE POLICY
All of the images produced by HiRISE and accessible on this site are within the public domain: there are no restrictions on their usage by anyone in the public, including news or science organizations. We do ask for a credit line where possible:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona

POSTSCRIPT
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The HiRISE camera was built by Ball Aerospace and Technology Corporation and is operated by the University of Arizona.