This area
of Mars' Candor Chasma lies within the region of "cryptic terrain"
that also includes the "lace" and "lizard skin" areas
recently revealed by planetary scientists in San Francisco at the meeting of
the American Geophysical Union.
Here, the
view faces the east, as if from a vantage point a few hundred yards or meters
above the surface. The image was produced using stereo data collected by the
High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA's Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft.
In this
mysterious, enigmatic scene, layers of bedrock have been folded into a series
of elliptical dome-like structures. The upper surfaces of these folds have been
stripped away by erosion, leaving behind concentric patterns of layers and "stair-stepped"
terrain. The dark-toned material is a layer of windblown sand that has been
trapped against the "steps" in the terrain. These patterns of layer
deformation must carry within them the geologic history of the region.
The width
of the scene at the bottom of the image is approximately 2,000 feet (about 600
meters), with no vertical exaggeration.
-- NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona and SPACE.com Staff
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
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