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PIA18118: Dramatic Dune Destination
Especially bright patches, bluish in enhanced color, are due to seasonal frost that is accumulating as this hemisphere approaches winter. This image of a sand dune field in a Southern highlands crater was acquired by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
 Mission:  Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) 
 Spacecraft:  Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)
 Instrument:  HiRISE 
 Product Size:  2880 x 1800 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  University of Arizona/HiRISE-LPL 
 Other  
Information: 		 Other products from image ESP_035143_1325 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA18118.tif (15.56 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA18118.jpg (672.5 kB)  

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This image of a sand dune field in a Southern highlands crater was acquired when the Sun was just 5 degrees above the horizon. As a result, the image is mostly shadows, with sharply-delineated dune crests sticking up into the sunlight.

The especially bright patches -- bluish in enhanced color -- are due to seasonal frost that is accumulating as this hemisphere approaches winter.

HiRISE is one of six instruments on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates the orbiter's HiRISE camera, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

Image Addition Date:
2014-03-12