NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft has captured a fascinating image of sand dunes with notably circular shapes, which is "unusual". The dunes were snapped by MRO's High-Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRise) colour camera.
"Sand dunes of many shapes and sizes are common on Mars. In this example, the dunes are almost perfectly circular, which is unusual," wrote planetary geologist Alfred McEwen for a HiRise picture-of-the-day feature Thursday.
Take a look at the image below:
The dunes are slightly asymmetrical, with steep slip faces on the south ends. "This indicates that sand generally moves to the south, but the winds may be variable," Mr McEwen explained in a press note.
According to CNET, the HiRise camera, which is operated out of the University Of Arizona, snapped the dunes in November last year. Researchers were studying the area to monitor for seasonal changes in frost coverage.
Mr McEwen stated that the recent picture is part of a series of images to monitor how frost disappears in the late winter. "This observation appears to be free of frost," he said.
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Meanwhile, the image of unusual-looking sand dunes come after scientists exploring the surface of the red planet discovered a fragment of the rocky planet that was grinning back at them. The formation of the surface created a strange shape that strikingly resembled the face of a teddy bear. Back then, experts explained that this occurs as a result of facial pareidolia, which is the tendency or delusion in which people perceive facial structures in inanimate objects.
As per NASA, the eyes of the teddy bear are the craters on the planet and the circular fracture pattern seen in the head could have been caused by the "settling of a deposit over a buried impact crater".
