MRO HiRISE images a small mound in north polar terrain & global weather update.

[3488]

<p><font size="2"><strong>&nbsp;Thought this was interesting. A pingo?????</strong></font></p><p><font size="4">MRO HiRISE images an unusual small mound in north polar terrain.</font></p><p><img src="http://sitelife.space.com/ver1.0/Content/images/store/0/1/2052f71c-d316-4f6e-9156-e46c166877a0.Medium.jpg" alt="" /><br />&nbsp;</p><p><font size="5">Also weather report.</font> </p><p><font size="2"><strong>General Synopsis: Hazy skies over MER A Sprit, MER B Opportunity & Mars Phoenix Lander sites. Water Ice clouds drapes giant volcanoes.</strong></font></p><p><font size="2"><strong>Andrew Brown.&nbsp;</strong></font></p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080">"I suddenly noticed an anomaly to the left of Io, just off the rim of that world. It was extremely large with respect to the overall size of Io and crescent shaped. It seemed unbelievable that something that big had not been visible before".</font> <em><strong><font color="#000000">Linda Morabito </font></strong><font color="#800000">on discovering that the Jupiter moon Io was volcanically active. Friday 9th March 1979.</font></em></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://www.launchphotography.com/</font><br /><br /><font size="1" color="#000080">http://anthmartian.googlepages.com/thisislandearth</font></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://web.me.com/meridianijournal</font></p> </div>

 

[JonClarke]

<p>I love the way the snow contrasts with the red.</p><p>Is it a pingo?&nbsp; Don't know.&nbsp; I haven't seen a pingo in the real world.&nbsp; But pingos usually show signs of upheaval and possibly collapse.</p><p>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imageingos_near_Tuk.jpg</p><p>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Melting_pingo_wedge_ice.jpg</p><p>Jon</p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em>Whether we become a multi-planet species with unlimited horizons, or are forever confined to Earth will be decided in the twenty-first century amid the vast plains, rugged canyons and lofty mountains of Mars</em>  Arthur Clarke</p> </div>

 

[MeteorWayne]

<p>Here's excerpts of the team on it:</p><p>http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/081015-mars-polar-cap.html</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial">"The mound may be the remnant of a buried impact crater, which is now being exhumed," said <span class="SpellE">HiRISE</span> team member Shane Byrne, of the University of Arizona.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial">If it sounds backwards for a crater to be revealed by a mound, there's a fairly simple explanation:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial">The crater formed as the north polar ice layers were being deposited. The crater itself would have been filled in by ice after it formed.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial">Most of these craters are buried under the Martian surface and inaccessible to scientists and their instruments. But this crater and its associated ice mound were exhumed as erosion formed a trough above and around it.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial">"For reasons that are poorly understood right now, the ice beneath the site of the crater is more resistant to this erosion, so that as the trough is formed, ice beneath the old impact site remained, forming this isolated hill," Byrne said.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial">At high resolution, the <span class="SpellE">HiRISE</span> image shows that the mound is made up of polygonal blocks as big as 33 feet (10 meters) across. The blocks are covered by the reddish dust that is ubiquitous on Mars, but otherwise resemble ice-rich blocks seen in other images of the north polar layered deposits.</span></p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>

 

[3488]

<p><font size="2"><strong>Thanks Wayne,</strong></font></p><p><font size="2"><strong>That makes perfect sense, a kind of pedestal crater, but because it filled woth ice & frozen regolith, the erosion pattern left an almost inverted pedestal crater, a mound covering the actual crater.</strong></font></p><p><font size="2"><strong>I do not see a mystery as to why the crater would be of harder material. Surely an impact of frozen regolith would cause compression, making the site denser??? True, volatiles would be drivien off, & excavated material, thrown out to form a blanket (which here is either buried or removed by the actions of the permafrost here).&nbsp; Underneath however, the bedrock would be compressed?????????<br /></strong></font></p><p><font size="2"><strong>I suspect that in millions of years time, there will indeed be a more conventional pedestal crater there once that mound erodes. Wonder if it's worth pinging with the SHARAD radar?</strong></font></p><p><font size="2"><strong>Andrew Brown.&nbsp;</strong></font></p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080">"I suddenly noticed an anomaly to the left of Io, just off the rim of that world. It was extremely large with respect to the overall size of Io and crescent shaped. It seemed unbelievable that something that big had not been visible before".</font> <em><strong><font color="#000000">Linda Morabito </font></strong><font color="#800000">on discovering that the Jupiter moon Io was volcanically active. Friday 9th March 1979.</font></em></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://www.launchphotography.com/</font><br /><br /><font size="1" color="#000080">http://anthmartian.googlepages.com/thisislandearth</font></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://web.me.com/meridianijournal</font></p> </div>