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Dunes in Nectaris Montes

May 14, 2018
This image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shows some of these on the slopes of Nectaris Montes within Coprates Chasma on Mars. Sand dunes in Valles Marineris can be impressive in size, with steep slopes that seem to climb and descend.
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The map is projected here at a scale of 50 centimeters (19.7 inches) per pixel.
[The original image scale is 52.4 centimeters (20.6 inches) per pixel (with 2 x 2 binning); objects on the order of 157 centimeters (62.8 inches) across are resolved.] North is up.

This image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shows some of these on the slopes of Nectaris Montes within Coprates Chasma. Sand dunes in Valles Marineris can be impressive in size, with steep slopes that seem to climb and descend.

The brighter bedforms are inactive while the bigger dunes move over the landscape, burying and exhuming the surface.

This is a stereo pair with ESP_054029_1650.

The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colorado. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

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