Throughout the year, we were able to observe various unimaginable views of space thanks to ground-based telescopes and probes aboard missions that are currently monitoring the skies. But we are getting closer and closer to the end of the year, and this does not mean that we will run out of more spectacular images. In fact, the image of an icy scene in the Ultimi Scopuli region, near the south pole of Mars, has been revealed. Although it would appear to be a common winter landscape, it is actually very special as it was taken on the eve of the Martian New Year, according to ESA, and the time when spring ends in the southern hemisphere and the ice begins to melt.
What to See in the Martian Christmas Landscape
The high-resolution stereo imaging camera aboard ESA’s Mars Express probe captured two large impact craters that caught the eye with their interiors streaked with alternating layers of water ice and fine sediments. These polar layered deposits are also exposed in exquisite detail in the rust-red ridge connecting the two craters.
[Photo: ESA/DLR/FU]
Dark dunes and dune fields can be seen in the image, which in some areas are covered by a thin layer of frost. These dune fields have adopted a “yardang”-like shape, a rock formation characteristically shaped by wind erosion, creating sharp ridges parallel to the prevailing wind direction, guided by the morphology of the underlying surface. In fact, the dark dust is thought to come from ancient buried layers of erupting volcanic material, is found throughout Mars, and is easily spread by strong winds.
Also visible in the image are individual dark spots that are apparently caused by a process unique to the polar areas of Mars. The jets of carbon dioxide are generated by the sublimation of ice into gas and have erupted through the ice sheets expelling a source of dark dust similar to a geyser, which is an opening of volcanic origin in the crust from which steam, gases, and hot water gush intermittently and usually turbulently.
These areas have been monitored from orbit and the processes that constantly alter the appearance of the surface in the polar regions of the red planet have been observed. Several large, irregularly shaped sublimation features arising from thawing ice packs can also be observed, looking somewhat similar to terrestrial lakes.
[Photo: ESA/DLR/FU]
To complete this incredible landscape, one can observe the hazy clouds that give the atmospheric feel of the scene. These clouds of the south polar region usually contain water ice and their trajectory is somewhat altered by the topography of the terrain.
During the seasonal cycle, carbon dioxide ice is deposited at the poles of Mars in the winter, the same ice that will sublimate in the spring. Between 12% and 16% of the planet’s atmosphere is deposited at the poles during the winter, and the release of gas increases atmospheric pressure and generates strong winds when the following spring arrives. Thanks to this continuous process, an enormous exchange of material is created between the surface and the atmosphere throughout the red planet’s year.
Finally, a curious fact that you may not have known, the Martian New Year (number 37 according to the way years are counted on Mars) begins next December 26, just one day after the 19th anniversary of the arrival of Mars Express to Mars, the first space probe launched by ESA to another planet.
Story originally published in Spanish in Ecoosfera