Beauty of Art and Images for you

On this page, I search for my readers the art, the beauty, the creativity, the impressionism …. where are, in our life
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The beauty of nature’s images

7) THE BEAUTY OF PLANETS:

a- PLANET MARS

I was looking for you – my dear friends – images that bring together the beauty of the universe, the charm of astronomical distances, the colors of space nature, the reliefs of planets and the beauty of photography.
I hope you will find a great pleasure, like me

 

A vantage point on « Vera Rubin Ridge » provided NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover this detailed look back over the area where it began its mission inside Gale Crater, plus more-distant features of the crater.

This view toward the north-northeast combines eight images taken by the right-eye, telephoto-lens camera of Curiosity’s Mast Camera (Mastcam). It shows more detail of a fraction of the area pictured in a more sweeping panorama (PIA22210) acquired from the same rover location using Mastcam’s left-eye, wider-angle-lens camera. The scene has been white-balanced so the colors of the rock materials resemble how they would appear under daytime lighting conditions on Earth.

The component images were taken on Oct. 25, 2017, during the 1,856th Martian day, or sol, of the rover’s work on Mars. At that point, Curiosity had gained 1,073 feet (327 meters) in elevation and driven 10.95 miles (17.63 kilometers) from its landing site.

Mount Sharp stands about 3 miles (5 kilometers) high in the middle of Gale Crater, which spans 96 miles (154 kilometers) in diameter. Vera Rubin Ridge is on the northwestern flank of lower Mount Sharp. The right foreground of this panorama shows a portion of Vera Rubin Ridge. In the distance is the northern wall of Gale Crater, with the rim crest forming the horizon roughly 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the rover’s location.

An annotated version, Figure 1, indicates where the rover landed (at « Bradbury Landing ») in 2012 and the initial portion of its drive, including investigation sites « Yellowknife Bay, » « Darwin » and « Cooperstown. » The rover’s exact landing site is hidden behind a slight rise. The heat shield, back shell, and parachute used during the spacecraft’s descent are within the pictured area but not recognizable due to the distance and to camouflaging by dust. At Yellowknife Bay in 2013, the mission found evidence of an ancient freshwater-lake environment that offered all of the basic chemical ingredients for microbial life.

Opportunity’s panoramic camera (Pancam) recorded the component images for this mosaic on Sept. 17, 2014, during the 3,786th Martian day, or sol, of Opportunity’s work on Mars.

This view from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover shows a site with a network of prominent mineral veins below a cap rock ridge on lower Mount Sharp.

Researchers used the rover in March 2015 to examine the structure and composition of the crisscrossing veins at the « Garden City » site in the center of this scene.

Mineral veins such as these form where fluids move through fractured rocks, depositing minerals in the fractures and affecting chemistry of the surrounding rock. In this case, the veins have been more resistant to erosion than the surrounding host rock.

The rock in the center foreground of this picture is suspected of being an iron meteorite. The panoramic camera on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit took this image during the rover’s 809th Martian day (April 12, 2006). The foreground rock, informally named « Allan Hills, » and a similar rock called « Zhong Shan, » just out of the field of view to the left, have a smoother texture and lighter tone than other rocks in the area.

The foreground of this scene from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover shows purple-hued rocks near the rover’s late-2016 location on lower Mount Sharp. The scene’s middle distance includes higher layers that are future destinations for the mission.

Variations in color of the rocks hint at the diversity of their composition on lower Mount Sharp. The purple tone of the foreground rocks has been seen in other rocks where Curiosity’s Chemical and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument has detected hematite. Winds and windblown sand in this part of Curiosity’s traverse and in this season tend to keep rocks relatively free of dust, which otherwise can cloak rocks’ color.

This view combines several frames taken by the Mast Camera (Mastcam) (Jan. 30, 2014) on NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity, looking into a valley to the west from the eastern side of a dune at the eastern end of the valley. The team operating Curiosity has chosen this valley as a likely route toward mid-term and long-term science destinations. The foreground dune, at a location called « Dingo Gap, » is about 3 feet (1 meter) high in the middle and tapered at south and north ends onto low scarps on either side of the gap.

Curiosity is a car-sized rover designed to explore Gale Crater on Mars as part of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission (MSL). Curiosity was launched from Cape Canaveral on November 26, 2011, at 15:02 UTC aboard the MSL spacecraft and landed on Aeolis Palus in Gale Crater on Mars on August 6, 2012, 05:17 UTC, after a 560 million km journey.

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This high-resolution color photo of the surface of Mars was taken by Viking Lander 2 at its Utopia Planitia landing site on May 18, 1979, and relayed to Earth by Orbiter 1 on June 7. It shows a thin coating of water ice on the rocks and soil. The time the frost appeared corresponds almost exactly with the buildup of frost one Martian year (23 Earth months) ago. Then it remained on the surface for about 100 days. Scientists believe dust particles in the atmosphere pick up bits of solid water. That combination is not heavy enough to settle to the ground. But carbon dioxide, which makes up 95 percent of the Martian atmosphere, freezes and adheres to the particles and they become heavy enough to sink. Warmed by the Sun, the surface evaporates the carbon dioxide and returns it to the atmosphere, leaving behind the water and dust. The ice seen in this picture, like that which formed one Martian year ago, is extremely thin, perhaps no more than one-thousandth of an inch thick.

Author:  NASA/JPL . Source: commons.wikimedia.org

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The author of all the photos and information of this article, is NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission.

More information about MARS is online at http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/

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