victoria crater mars.
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victoria crater mars. 800-meter-wide. this image of victoria crater in the meridiani planum region of mars (right) was taken by the high resolution imaging (hirise) camera on nasa’s mars reconnaissance orbiter. the camera was pointing 22 degrees east of vertical, yielding a view comparable to looking at the landscape out an airplane window. east is at the top. the steep walls of the crater expose the geological strata, difficult to see from straight overhead. especially prominent in this oblique view is a bright band near the top of the crater wall. the colors have been enhanced to make subtle differences more visible. earlier hirise images of victoria crater lead to further exploration by nasa’s opportunity rover. opportunity explored the rim and interior of this 800-meter-wide (half-mile) crater from september 2006 through august 2008. the rover’s on-site investigations indicated that the bright band near the top of the crater wall was formed by diagenesis – chemical and physical changes in sediments after deposition. the bright band separates bedrock from the material displaced by the impact of the crater. this hirise image was taken on july 18, 2009. some of opportunity’s tracks are still visible to the north of the crater (left side of this cutout). _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ full-frame images from this hirise observation, catalogued as esp_013954_1780, are at http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/esp_013954_1780. the full-frame image is centered at 2.1 degrees south latitude, 354.5 degrees east longitude. it was taken at 2:31 p.m. local mars time. the scene is illuminated from the west with the sun 49 degrees above the horizon. image credit: nasa/jpl-caltech/university of arizona |
