Northern Sand Sea

Scaled Image

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/ASU

About this image

During April 2005, the image of the day concentrated on dunes, including the north polar sand sea and isolated dune fields at lower latitudes. Sand seas on Earth are often called 'ergs', an Arabic name for dune field. A sand sea differs from a dune field in two ways: 1) a sand sea has a large regional extent,and 2) the individual dunes are large in size and complex in form.
This VIS image was taken at 82 degrees North latitude during Northern spring. The image is completely dominated by dunes. In sand seas, it is very common for a single type of dune to occur, and for a single predominate wind to control the alignment of the dunes.

Please see the THEMIS Data Citation Note for details on crediting THEMIS images. 

Context

Image ID: 
V11941001 (View data in Mars Image Explorer)
82.1579
152.469
11941
2004-08-23 07:31
Wed, 2005-04-06
VIS
1024 pixels (20 km)
3648 pixels (72 km)
0.019993 km/pixel
0.020138 km/pixel

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