NASA Mars Odyssey THEMIS Image: Canyon in DCS Color

Image Context:


Context image credit: NASA/Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) Team
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This image shows two representations of the same infra-red image covering a portion of Ganges Chasma. On the left is a grayscale image showing surface temperature, and on the right is a false-color composite made from 3

individual THEMIS bands. The false-color image is colorized using a technique called decorrelation stretch (DCS), which emphasizes the spectral differences between the bands to highlight compositional variations.

The northern canyon at the top of this image is dominated by a bright

red/magenta area consisting primarly basaltic materials on the floor of

the canyon and atmospheric dust. Within that area, there are patches

of purple, on the walls and in the landslides, that may be due to an

olivine rich mineral layer. In the middle of the image, the green on the mesa

between the two canyons is from a layer of dust. The patchy blue areas in the southern canyon are likely due to water ice clouds.

[Source: ASU THEMIS Science Team]

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) was developed by Arizona State University, Tempe, in collaboration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. The THEMIS investigation is led by Dr. Philip Christensen at Arizona State University. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the Odyssey project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Arizona State University