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Spring Fans at Macclesfield

June 2, 2020
This image acquired on April 27, 2020 by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, shows fans of dust blown out from under the seasonal layer of carbon dioxide ice that forms a polar cap over the winter.

Every Martian spring, fans of dust are blown out from under the seasonal layer of carbon dioxide ice that forms a polar cap over the winter.

Gas blowing out from under the ice carries with it a load of dust that is deposited on the surface in a direction determined by the wind at the time of the eruption. Like windsocks, these fans in a polar area we've dubbed Macclesfield, record the direction that the wind was blowing.

A citizen science task at Planet Four enlists the public to outline the fans. Their measurements go into a data base that will ultimately help us to understand weather on Mars.

The map is projected here at a scale of 50 centimeters (19.7 inches) per pixel. (The original image scale is 49.1 centimeters [19.3 inches] per pixel [with 2 x 2 binning]; objects on the order of 147 centimeters [57.9 inches] across are resolved.) North is up.

The University of Arizona, in Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., in 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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