10/15/2003: Martian badlands

Okay, so maybe it isn't exactly "badlands" - but pretty close. I was struck by this image because if I hadn't read the caption I would not have guessed what this was. It's a shot of Mars, specifically the north polar ice cap, taken by the Mars Global Surveyor over 3 years ago and just recently released.

The light-toned surfaces are residual water ice that remains through the summer season. The nearly circular band of dark material surrounding the cap consists mainly of sand dunes formed and shaped by wind.

At first glance I thought it was a shiny close-up of some kind of oil glob. I'm glad it's not, because I don't want to have to declare war against the Martians.

Great picture, UT. I wonder if that's where Dune was filmed?

My first thought was that it looked like a macro shot of water. Except that the title of the thread says that it's from Mars. I glanced at it again and realized: "oh! that must be an ice cap!"

Wow. It really does look like an overly close macro shot of water.

Slap a frame on it and hang it in a gallery. It looks like some painting you'd see. Look at it as a whole rather than focusing on any one part. It looks like paint on canvas

Quzah.

Looks like someone's ass on a Xerox copier to me.