Night and Day in Melas Chasma on Mars
What types of terrain are found on Mars?
Part of the answer comes from thermal imaging by the
robot spacecraft 2001 Mars Odyssey currently orbiting
Mars.
The above picture is a superposition of two
infrared images,
a black and white image taken during
Martian daylight and a false-color image taken at night.
For the daytime image, dark colors mean cool temperatures, dropping from about -5 degrees
Celsius to low as -35 degrees
Celsius.
Shadowed regions appear particularly dark, while
grooved structure on the floor of
Melas Chasma indicates successively overlapping
landslides.
In the nighttime swath, blue areas have cooled relatively quickly,
indicating a composition of fine-grained dust and
sand.