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Wild Dust Devils Scour Mars' Surface, Leave Scratch-Like Marks

Our dusty neighbor is often crossed by powerful winds. As a result, a variety of patterns form on the planet's surface, such as these chaotic mounds, sand ripples, and dust devil tracks captured by the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter.
Martian dust devils appear wierdly bluish 6 photos
Photo: ESA/Roscosmos/CaSSIS
Dust devil captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance OrbiterDust devil marks on MarsDust devil marks on MarsDust devil captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance OrbiterDust devil marks on Mars
The image that you're looking at seems like it's taken out of a sci-fi movie. But it's actually an area on Mars located near the impact crater Hooke. The picture was captured by a satellite that's been orbiting the Red Planet for more than a decade now.

Using its High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera, the orbiter surprised these fascinating patterns. This type of landscape is often referred to as "chaotic terrain" by scientists because it has a variety of "irregular knobs, conical mounds, ridges, and flat-topped hills" that are all grouped together in valleys.

While the image captured by the orbiter shows plenty of sand ripples and dunes, the marks left behind by the dust devils are what sticks out the most. The way these dust devils form on the Red Planet is similar to that on Earth. As the Sun heats the martian ground, the hot air at the surface starts to rise rapidly through much cooler air, picking up dust and shaping it into tornado-like whirlwinds.

Although the martian dust devils share some similarities to those on our planet, they're much bigger on Mars. They can rise up to five miles (eight km) and wide trails that can stretch out for miles across the surface.

The result is these crisscrossed marks that you're seeing in this image. Now, let's address the patterns' color. Normally, the human eye cannot see them in blue – they're often just dark trails against a lighter background. The bluish tint shown here is the result of three filters combined to form a color infrared picture that allows scientists to better observe the mineralogy of the martian surface.
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About the author: Florina Spînu
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Florina taught herself how to drive in a Daewoo Tico (a rebadged Suzuki Alto kei car) but her first "real car" was a VW Golf. When she’s not writing about cars, drones or aircraft, Florina likes to read anything related to space exploration and take pictures in the middle of nature.
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