NASA Mars Picture of the Day: Mars on 25 December 2003

Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera

MGS MOC Release No. MOC2-599, 8 January 2004

This is how Mars appeared to the
Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) wide
angle system on 25 December 2003, the day that Beagle 2
and Mars Express reached the red planet. The large, dark
region just left of center is Syrtis Major, a persistent
low albedo terrain known to astronomers for nearly four centuries
before the first spacecraft went to Mars. Immediately
to the right (east) of Syrtis Major is the somewhat
circular plain, Isidis Planitia. Beagle 2 arrived in Isidis
Planitia only about 18 minutes before Mars Global Surveyor
flew over the region and acquired a portion of this global
view. Relative to
other global images of Mars acquired by MGS over the past several martian years,
the surface
features were not as sharp and distinct on 25 December 2003
because of considerable haze kicked up by large dust
storms in the western and southern hemispheres during th
previous two weeks. The picture is a composite of several MGS MOC
red and blue daily global images that have been map-projected
and digitally wrapped to a sphere. Although the effect here is
minor, inspection of this mosaic shows zones that appear
smudged or blurry. The high dust opacity on 25 December impacted
MOC’s oblique viewing geometry toward the edges of each orbit’s
daily global mapping image, thus emphasizing the
“blurry” zones between images acquired on successive orbits.