Valles Marineris


[Edited to modify topic title]

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Very nice!

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I notice a dark spot at the very bottom of the picture. It looks very much like a shadow. Or a cloud? Or is it some type of artifact on the picture itself?

Well that entire bottom part looks rather dim but the features are sharp. So whatever it is it'd be above the spacecraft, and I believe it's high enough that the clouds won't go over it.
As for the dark spot in particular, could it possibly be one of the moons casting a shadow on the planet? I think the craft is too small... just speculating everyone, this doesn't mean I actually know what I'm talking about!

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Very nice picture! =D> =D> =D>


-ST

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You can see crazy amounts of detail on those Mars Express images. They do look a little shiny/glossy though.

I've seen it explained on the ESA site somewhere, but I can't remember where exactly. It's in other pictures too ( http://www.esa.int/export/externals/...22_reull_p.jpg is one example).

It is a pretty picture. It still looks too green to me.

My first thought on the dark spot was a moon shadow as well. The page didn't say.

I remember it saying something like it was a material deposited by some kind of water channel. Thinking back now it might have been one of the video clips on ESA that explained it. Perhaps these images were taken to enhance such features, and the dark shade is simply how these enhanced bits came out.

It looks suspiciously green to me, as well -- but, rather than an artifact of image processing, couldn't that coloration perhaps be due to the chemical constituency of the material? Copper compounds, perhaps? Or would that be whackily inconsistent with what we know of the geology?

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And another: Olympus Mons caldera

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Olympus Mons is BEAUTIFUL!

Thanks for the link!

DP

Both are absolutely awesome!
=D> =D> =D>

Rc

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Can you imagine what this looked like when it was active!
And I thought the stuff in Hawaii was big.

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How big were the eruptions? After all part of the reason why that thing is so big is that lack of plate tectonics which moves Hawaii islands away from the hot spot and because the amount of erosion is much less (look at how many obvious craters there are). Is Olympus Mons so big due to less erosion and no plate tectonics to move it away from a hot spot? Or is it so big because the eruptions really were that big? Or was it both?

Martian volcanoes are bigger because, as you suggest, there are no plate tectonics to move the volcanoes off the hots spots. The volcanoes were active much longer than Earth volcanoes.

I always heard that it was the lack of plat tectonics, so it just stayed in one spot. The Hawaiian islands are the perfect example of a plate moving over a hot spot. So how big would the single Hawaiian island been if the plate didn't move! I hadn't thought about less errosion, interesting idea. I wasn't particularly thinking of a big, single erruption, but I wonder if there was an exposed lava lake (sea, pond) at the top of the caldera. If it was proportional, it would have been huge.

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Those cracks in the crater look a bit like stretch marks. Could these be formed by the magma chamber cooling and shrinking?

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Probably. Or as the caldera floor continued to settle after the eruption ended.

There are similar (but MUCH smaller) cracks on the floor of the several caldera floors around Volcano National park in Hawaii.

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