PIA24148: Dust Devil Dance


Dust Devil Dance

Caption:

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Map Projected Browse Image
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Dune fields in the high southern latitudes of Mars tell a mostly similar story during local summer. The dark dunes grow warmer than the surrounding bright plains because they absorb more sunlight.

Dust devils form over the warm dunes but then dance out over the plains, spinning and performing pirouettes and leaving conspicuous dark tracks as bright dust is lifted from the surface. Loops in the tracks can often be used to discern the direction traveled by the dust devils, where in some cases, one track clearly overprints the other.

The map is projected here at a scale of 25 centimeters (9.8 inches) per pixel. (The original image scale is 24.9 centimeters [9.8 inches] per pixel [with 1 x 1 binning]; objects on the order of 75 centimeters [29.5 inches] across are resolved.) North is up.

Background Info:

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.

Cataloging Keywords:

Name Value Additional Values
Target Mars
System
Target Type Planet
Mission Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)
Instrument Host Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
Host Type Orbiter
Instrument High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE)
Detector
Extra Keywords Color, Dune, Dust, Map, Rotation
Acquisition Date
Release Date 2020-10-12
Date in Caption
Image Credit NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA24148
Identifier PIA24148