Released August 24, 2004

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

Acheron Catera

• Catera: chain of craters
• Acheron: river of woe. Acheron is one of the nine rivers separating Hades from the land of the living. It is across Acheron that Charon ferries the dead. Cerberus guards this river. If a person is not buried correctly, or does not have the fare to pay Charon, his/her soul is doomed to wander the banks of Acheron forever.

Acheron Catena is a line of craters found on the flanks of Alba Patera -- a very old volcano. The majority of the craters appear to have formed by collapse.

Nomenclature Fact of the Day: Earth's Moon is the only body in the solar system (besides Earth) that uses the descriptor Oceanus.

Image information: VIS instrument. Latitude 38.2, Longitude 256.2 East (103.8 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.