Part of the Abalos Undae dune field. The sands appear blueish because of their basaltic composition...
Erosion of the south polar residual ice cap, with exposed strata in pits surrounded by cracked polygonal features...
A small impact crater, pitted knobs, and a criss-cross mesh of dust devil trails across the martian surface...
I grew up reading Azimov and Clarke and Bradbury, so I just can't get enough of these wonderful pictures coming back from the Mars lander and the Reconnaissance Orbiter. I've previously posted pix of Martian dust devil trails and of barchan sand dunes on Mars and on earth. The photos above are selections from a set of 35 assembled at Boston.com's The Big Picture in their wonderful large-format setting.
Photo credit NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
If you told me these were scanning electron microscope images I would believe you. Fascinating how the micro and the macro look so similar.
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