Mars Odyssey Image: Martian Dunes in Infrared

Images: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA03740

This collage of six images taken by the camera system on NASA’s Mars Odyssey, shows examples of the daytime temperature patterns of martian dunes seen by the infrared camera. The dunes can be seen in this daytime image because of the temperature differences between the sunlit (warm and bright) and shadowed (cold and dark) slopes of the dunes. The temperatures in each image vary, but typically range from approximately -35 degrees Celsius (-31 degrees Fahrenheit) to -15 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit). Each image covers an area approximately 32 by 32 kilometers (20 by 20 miles) and was acquired using the infrared Band 9, centered at 12.6 micrometers. Clockwise from the upper left, these images are: (a) Russel crater, 54 degrees south latitude, 13 degrees east longitude; (b) Kaiser crater. 45 degrees south latitude, 19 degrees east longitude; (c) Rabe crater, 43 south latitude, 35 east longitude; (d) 22 north latitude, 66 degrees east longitude; (e) Proctor crater. 47 degrees south latitude, 30 degrees east longitude; (f) 61 degrees south latitude, 201 degrees east longitude.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA’s Office of Space Science in Washington, D.C. Investigators at Arizona State University in Tempe, the University of Arizona in Tucson and NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Houston, operate the science instruments. Additional science partners are located at the Russian Aviation and Space Agency and at Los Alamos National Laboratories, New Mexico. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL.

Image Note: NASA/JPL/Arizona State University.