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Hummocky Terrain On Moreux Crater Wall

HiRISE Image TRA_000871_2215

Wind has sculpted much of Mars' landscape. In this image, the hummocky interior of Moreux crater, the terrain appears to be blanketed with a mantling layer that softens the wind-sculpted topography. The area is full of alternating dark and light patches. At higher resolution, the dark patches are seen to be boulder fields, while the lighter regions are areas of flatter terrain. No boulders are seen in the small crater at the bottom center of the image, perhaps because they are covered with a deeper layer of the drift, that accumulated in the floor of the crater. The burial of underlying boulders and rough terrain is clearest in the lower right corner of the image, with distinct boundaries of thicker mantling material. On top of this thickly mantled region is a smaller population of boulders. The "stratigraphy" (order of layers) is such that the bottom layer is rough wind-sculpted terrain and boulder fields, covered by mantle drift, topped by a lower number of smaller boulders.

Image TRA_000871_2215 was taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft on October 3, 2006. The complete image is centered at 41.0 degrees latitude, 43.7 degrees East longitude. The range to the target site was 296.3 km (185.2 miles). At this distance the image scale ranges from 59.3 cm/pixel (with 2 x 2 binning) to 118.6 cm/pixel (with 4 x 4 binning). The image shown here has been map-projected to 50 cm/pixel and north is up. The image was taken at a local Mars time of 3:18 PM and the scene is illuminated from the west with a solar incidence angle of 45 degrees, thus the sun was about 45 degrees above the horizon. At a solar longitude of 115.3 degrees, the season on Mars is Northern Summer.

Images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment and additional information about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are available online at:

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/

or

http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/HiRISE/

For information about NASA and agency programs on the Web, visit: http://www.nasa.gov. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems is the prime contractor for the project and built the spacecraft. The HiRISE camera was built by Ball Aerospace and Technology Corporation and is operated by the University of Arizona.

Image Product Pixel Dimensions File Size
Small JPG 512
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Large JPG 2048
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Full-Scale JP2 12686
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7272
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Note

The highest resolution image is provided in the JPEG-2000 (JP2) format. A JP2 viewer application and browser plug-in may be freely obtained for Mac OS X and Windows platforms: ExpressView by LizardTech, a Celartem Technology Inc. company.

Learn more about HiRISE at these sites: