Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Caves, water evidence found on Mars

A spacecraft called the Mars Odyssey has detected what looks like the openings of seven caves on a volcano named Arsia Mons near Mars’ tallest mountain. The spacecraft’s infrared cameras indicated temperature changes showing that the temperature around the potential openings vary much less than the temperature of the urrounding terrain.

If you look at the picture below, the two infrared images on the right are of the cave named “Annie” which is cooler than the surrounding area in the afternoon (middle image) and warmer than the surrounding area at night (right image). The lighter colors indicate a higher temperature. This opening is about the length of two football fields!!

No comments: