Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to Best view yet!

Observations

Thirty megabytes of goodness here: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA20350

From this, a cropped view of the crater:

http://habitablezone.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/PIA20350crop.jpg


I turned this image 180 degrees so that it, at least to my eyes, shows the relief correctly. Your vision may differ, and invert the view so that hills are valleys.

There is a lot going on here, aside from the puffball in the middle, which is so cool. It sits dead center of the crater, so it is not at all surprising to see some kind of salt-ice tectonics occurring here. We speculated before that the other spots occur along some kind of rift within the crater, and this image shows a complex, arcing fracture system. Why arcing? There is a fanning to the fractures as well.

The spots to the lower left of this view show two volcanic looking vents. Wow! The furthest to the left seems fresh (sharp walls) and the next one to the right seems older (not as sharp, filled with material). Both sit on obvious fractures and are surrounded by apron deposits. A salt-ice volcano?

The dome is beautiful. It's like a glob of toothpaste oozing out. It does not look explosive, more like a rhyolitic dome that we find in a caldera. Radial fractures and all. It will be exciting to see it evolve. It is surrounded by circular fractures that indicate subsidence.

But the really neat thing in this frame? It's that strange fracture pattern at the upper right of the arcing rift. Have you ever seen a strong plant push through an asphalt driveway? Before it manages to break through, the asphalt will fracture in a pattern pretty much like this.

So is another salt-ice diapir pushing upward here? Will we get to see it emerge?

Edited by Robert to improve text formatting.

Log in or register to post.

The whole thread (7 posts)

Related discussions