Released August 19, 2004

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

Tantalus Fluctus

• Fluctus: flow terrain
• Tantalus: son of Zeus; King of Sipylos. He cut up and stewed the flesh of his son to serve at a feast with the gods. For this crime his family was cursed for five generations.

The Tantalus Fluctus region of Mars is comprised of multiple lava flows. The margin of one of these flows is indicated by red arrows on the VIS image above.

Nomenclature Fact of the Day: Three landform types that do not use a descriptor as part of their name are craters, eruptive centers, and large ring features.

Image information: VIS instrument. Latitude 33.9, Longitude 261.1 East (98.9 West). 19 meter/pixel resolution.

Note: this THEMIS visual image has not been radiometrically nor geometrically calibrated for this preliminary release. An empirical correction has been performed to remove instrumental effects. A linear shift has been applied in the cross-track and down-track direction to approximate spacecraft and planetary motion. Fully calibrated and geometrically projected images will be released through the Planetary Data System in accordance with Project policies at a later time.

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.