The power of HiRISE Options

[Stu]

Busy preparing a new Outreach talk here, and have been trying to find some images to illustrate the "power" of HiRISE for a non-technical audience. Playing about with - sorry, carefully looking at the images on - the addictive Mars Global Data site I found a cute landslide on Xanthe Terra that does the trick nicely. Using the IAS Viewer you can zoom in on the boulders carried down the slope by the landslide and even see cracks and splits in them... unbelievable...!



Anyone else got any fave examples?

[nprev]

Shooting from the hip here, Stu's impact cluster (great find & great article, BTW, dude! ) covers a very large amount of surface area, so I wouldn't expect them to originate from the atmospheric breakup of a single object. Mars' atmosphere is super-thin anyhow, and nowhere is it thinner than in the Tharsis Bulge area.

However, one interesting possibility is that this is what's left of the impact of five or more discrete objects that were once one, but were disrupted while still in space into a loose association separated by tens of km or more. Perhaps a small comet nucleus that had been fragmented after perihelion passage then had the misfortune to encounter Mars on the outbound leg?

</wild speculation mode>