Colour plan view of the east of Syrtis Major
Colour plan view of the east of Syrtis Major
This colour view has been created using the nadir channel, which is directed vertically down onto the Martian surface, and the colour channels of the HRSC camera system on board ESA's Mars Express spacecraft; north is to the right in the image. The image section shown comprises an area of about 16,000 square kilometres – roughly the size of metropolitan New York.
The surface of Mars, mostly tinged in earthen, orange-red tones, shows colour variations in these HRSC pictures. These could be due to the composition of the rocks and the regolith, the topmost dust and sand layer, in this region. They could also be caused by differences in the structure of the surface, its roughness, the grain size of the regolith components or its porosity.
Copyright note:
As a joint undertaking by DLR, ESA and FU Berlin, the Mars Express HRSC images are published under a Creative Commons licence since December 2014: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO. This licence will also apply to all HRSC images released to date.