Posted on 06/19/2005 4:17:09 AM PDT by gd124
This image from the Mars Express spacecraft shows a pocket of water ice nestling in a martian crater, bathed in the late martian summer sun. The shadow of the crater’s rim, which towers 300 metres over the surrounding plains, prevents the ice from vaporizing in the planet’s thin atmosphere. A dusting of frost survives inside the rim to the upper right, while the sun glimmers on its south-facing outer edge. The 35-kilometre-wide crater sits 70 north of the martian equator, in a low-lying region known as Vastitas Borealis. Previous orbiters have spotted ice deposits in craters, but the High Resolution Stereo Camera on board the European probe is the first to return a threedimensional colour image of an icy spot. The ice may be up to 200 metres thick, and lies over a dune field that has formed in the sediment on the crater’s floor. The data were collected on 2 February, and this image was created for Nature last week.
Wow! It looks kind of like an egg over easy. What do you suppose that splotch is on the rim of the ice at 11 o'clock?
Martian resort hotel?
Or the yolk
Durbin's brain?
oil spill.
Thanks for this post - I now have new wallpaper. (Poor Condoleeza sitting at a grand piano, is now relegated to my picture folder; done in by rocks and ice.)
Noah's Ark.
Large bird dropping?
Darn, they gave away my secret recreation area.
My wife still says it's the Nevada desert somewhere. LOL
> Martian resort hotel?
Yeah, and I suppose you could ski down from it to the crater floor.
From the looks of it (a 35-kilometre-wide crater) there is a lot of water in that one crater.
Come on people! Let’s get with a manned program – the sci-fi writers promised me a long time ago that I could retire to Mars!
Shielah Jackson-Lee
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