NASA Announces August 4 News Briefing On MRO Science Finding Options

[bluemars1]

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2011/aug/H...Mars_Brief.html

[stevesliva]

Amusingly, it's similar images of water that make me wonder if the albedo changes simply have to do with the clumpiness of the dust in the streaks. There's activity in snowpack called either sloughing/sluffing. Basically by altering only the texture of the snow, it creates streaks like the ones found in the dust on Mars:


I guess this sort of thing is more common with SAR... but you can see it in plain old visible light. The whole slope is bright white snow. Up close the color of the sluffs is no different. They're just reflecting the sky back to the camera differently.

Like snow, the dust probably falls in dry and sparsely packed, and clumps up more when something starts it rolling.

I wonder if the streaks are just clumpier dust on airfall dust. They do need a trigger, though. That could be a tiny bit of water starting a basically dry sluff.

[schaffman]

Amusingly, it's similar images of water that make me wonder if the albedo changes simply have to do with the clumpiness of the dust in the streaks. There's activity in snowpack called either sloughing/sluffing. Basically by altering only the texture of the snow, it creates streaks like the ones found in the dust on Mars:


I guess this sort of thing is more common with SAR... but you can see it in plain old visible light. The whole slope is bright white snow. Up close the color of the sluffs is no different. They're just reflecting the sky back to the camera differently.

Like snow, the dust probably falls in dry and sparsely packed, and clumps up more when something starts it rolling.

I wonder if the streaks are just clumpier dust on airfall dust. They do need a trigger, though. That could be a tiny bit of water starting a basically dry sluff.

I really like your photo of the snow sloughing features. I'm just starting a wikipedia article about martian dark slope streaks, and am wondering if I could use the photo there. If so, how should I credit it? Thanks.
Tom