PIA20463: A Possible Alluvial Fan
 Target Name:  Mars
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 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: 
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 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA20463.tif (15.56 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA20463.jpg (869 kB)

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This image shows the northern rim of a crater in Deuteronilus. At the northern end, we see the crater rim and ridges inside and below that rim. A channel set is entering from the west and passing through a notch in a ridge. Topographically below that notch, overlapping lobes spread over the crater floor.

Fan-shaped lobes likes these are also in the desert southwest of the United States, and are called "alluvial fans." They are caused when streams that carry sediment in a confined channel open up onto a plain or wide area, and deposit their sediment just outside of the channel mouth.

This is a stereo pair with ESP_028274_2160.

The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, 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 NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

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

Image Addition Date:
2016-02-11