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PIA17637: Diffuse Winter Lighting of the Chasma Boreale Scarp
Sunlight was just starting to reach the high Northern latitudes in late winter when NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera captured this image of part of the steep scarps around portions of the North Polar layered deposits.
 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: 		 Other products from image ESP_032559_2645 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA17637.tif (15.56 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA17637.jpg (1.183 MB)  

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

Sunlight was just starting to reach the high Northern latitudes in late winter when HiRISE captured this image of part of the steep scarps around portions of the North Polar layered deposits.

The sunlight is highly diffused by atmospheric scattering, with the sun less than 0.5 degrees above the horizon. This diffuse light gives the image a unique appearance, almost like a painting. The surface is entirely covered by carbon dioxide frost mixed with dust.

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:
2013-08-08