Skip to main content

Otherworldly Mars image shows ripples sculpted by dust devils

The European Space Agency (ESA) has released a hauntingly beautiful image of the surface of Mars, showing how the landscape there is sculpted by winds.

The image, taken from orbit by the ESA and Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), shows the Hooke Crater area in the southern highlands of Mars. The false colors are due to the filters used by TGO’s CaSSIS camera, which looks in the infrared wavelength to capture more details of the surface mineralogy.

A fascinating and otherworldly landscape near Hooke Crater in Mars’ southern highlands.
Chaotic mounds, wind-sculpted ripples, and dust devil tracks: This image shows a fascinating and otherworldly landscape near Hooke Crater in Mars’ southern highlands. The image was taken by the CaSSIS camera onboard the ESA/Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) on February 1, 2021, and shows part of Argyre Planitia, centered at 46.2°S/318.3°E. ESA/Roscosmos/CaSSIS

This unusual-looking scenery is par for the course on Mars, where the thin atmosphere, high winds, and large amounts of dust combine to create striking features on the surface.

Recommended Videos

“This type of scenery is similar to ‘chaotic terrain’: A kind of broken, disrupted terrain seen across Mars where haphazard groups of variously sized and shaped rocks — irregular knobs, conical mounds, ridges, flat-topped hills known as mesas — clump together, often enclosed within depressions,” the European Space Agency explains. “There are around 30 regions of chaotic terrain defined on Mars (see ESA Mars Express views of Ariadnes Colles, Pyrrhae Regio, and Iani Chaos for just a small sample); while this small patch has not been defined as one of these, its appearance is certainly chaotic.”

Close-up image of the false-colored contrast (blue) indicating whorls from dust devils and canyons.
ESA/Roscosmos/CaSSIS

When seen up close, you can see the blue-tinted tendrils stretching out across the image. These are the tracks of dust devils, whirlwinds which are like tiny tornadoes and are common on Mars. When hot air at the surface of the planet rises quickly through cooler air above it, it forms an updraft that can begin to rotate and create a dust devil. This spinning column of air travels across the planet’s surface, leaving the distinctive tracks, before petering out.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

ESA notes that the tracks seen in this image appear to travel on a north-south orientation, which could be the result of local winds blowing in that direction. Learning more about the <artian weather, including its winds, is the major focus of one of the instruments aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover. The MEDA instrument collects data on wind speed and direction, temperature, humidity, and the amount of dust in the atmosphere in order to better understand the martian weather system.

Georgina Torbet
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
Elon Musk shares new target date for Starship voyage to Mars
elon musk stylized image

SpaceX is aiming to launch “about five” uncrewed Starship voyages to Mars in two years’ time, according to a post on X (formerly Twitter) by CEO Elon Musk on Sunday.

Musk said that if the uncrewed missions land safely on the red planet, then the first crewed mission could take place as early as 2028, but he added that “if we encounter challenges, then the crewed missions will be postponed another two years” due to the alignment of Earth and Mars that makes such journeys possible. He continued: “We want to enable anyone who wants to be a space traveler to go to Mars! That means you or your family or friends -- anyone who dreams of great adventure. Eventually, there will be thousands of Starships going to Mars and it will a glorious sight to see! Can you imagine? Wow.”

Read more
James Webb image shows two galaxies in the process of colliding
This composite image of Arp 107, created with data from the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-InfraRed Camera) and MIRI (Mid-InfraRed Instrument), reveals a wealth of information about the star formation taking place in these two galaxies and how they collided hundreds of million years ago. The near-infrared data, shown in white, show older stars, which shine brightly in both galaxies, as well as the tenuous gas bridge that runs between them. The vibrant background galaxies are also brightly illuminated at these wavelengths.

A new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows one of the universe's most dramatic events: the colliding of two galaxies. The pair, known as Arp 107, are located located 465 million light-years away and have been pulled into strange shapes by the gravitational forces of the interaction, but this isn't a purely destructive process. The collision is also creating new stars as young stars are born in swirling clouds of dust and gas.

The image above is a composite, bringing together data from Webb's NIRCam (Near-InfraRed Camera) and MIRI (Mid-InfraRed Instrument). These two instruments operate in different parts of the infrared, so they can pick up on different processes. The data collected in the near-infrared range is seen in white, highlighting older stars and the band of gas running between the two galaxies. The mid-infrared data is shown in orange and red, highlighting busy regions of star formation, with bright young stars putting out large amounts of radiation.

Read more
Check out this incredible cloud atlas of Mars
Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud (AMEC): This elongated cloud has formed as a result of wind encountering the Arsia Mons mountains. It forms almost every day during a specific season, from early morning until noon.

Photographing a beautiful sky is a great passion for many here on Earth, but it can be just as striking on another planet too. Researchers recently presented a stunning new "cloud atlas" of Mars: a database containing 20 years' worth of images of clouds and storms observed on the red planet.

The cloud atlas is available online, inviting you to browse the many images of martian weather captured by the Mars Express spacecraft. This European Space Agency mission has been in orbit around Mars since 2005, and has taken hundreds of images of the planet using its High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) instrument.

Read more