NASA Mars Odyssey THEMIS Image: Lycus Sulci

Image Context:


Context image credit: NASA/Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) Team
[ Find on map: Javascript version ]

[ Find on map: CGI version ]

The THEMIS Image of the Day will be exploring the nomenclature of Mars for the next three weeks.

Lycus Sulci

• Sulci: subparallel furrows and ridges
• Lycus: King Lycus of Thebes. Uncle of Antiope, he

  honored his brother’s deathbed wish to bring

  the girl home to Thebes. Lycus marched his

  army to Sicyon, slew Antiope’s husband and

  brought her home to a life of hardship and

  cruelty.

Lycus Sulci is a lowlying area of ridges and valleys found

to the northwest of Olympus Mons. It is not yet understood

how this feature formed or how it relates to the formation

of Olympus Mons itself. The VIS image above shows the ridge

forms that are typical of this region.

Nomenclature Fact of the Day: With the Cassini Spacecraft now in

orbit around Saturn, we will be getting new images of

the Solar System’s largest moon, Titan. The IAU has

already decided on the types of names for different

features on Titan.

[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