This is the Web Edition of "A Trip Into Space", a Coimbra-based electronic book on space science. Both the texts and the photos are by courtesy of National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
| This is the Web Edition of "A Trip Into Space", a Coimbra-based electronic book on space science. Both the texts and the photos are by courtesy of National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
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A Trip Into Space  Mars Global Views Mars - Syrtis Major Hemisphere |
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| See also: Mars Fact Sheet |   |
Mosaic of the Syrtis Major hemisphere of Mars projected into a point perspective, a view similar to that which one would see from a spacecraft. The viewer's distance is 2,000 kilometers above the surface of the planet. This mosaic is composed of about 100 red and violet filter Viking Orbiter images. The images were acquired in 1980 during early northern summer on Mars. The center of this image is near latitude -1.0, longitude 306.
For GIF formatted image files, the color variations have been enhanced by a factor of two, and the large-scale brightness variations (mostly due to sun-angle variations) have been normalized by large-scale filtering.
The large bright colored area, located in the upper left area of the image is known as Arabia. The dark area to the right of Arabia, called Syrtis Major Planus, is a low-relief volcanic shield of probable basaltic composition. Bright white areas to the south, including the Hellas impact basin at extreme lower right, are covered by carbon dioxide frost. Regions to the west and south of Syrtis Major are heavily cratered and relatively old. The dark feature coming around the western horizon is known as Sinus Sabaeus.
Image Processing by Jody Swann/Tammy Becker/Alfred McEwen, using the PICS (Planetary Image Cartography System) image processing system developed at the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Arizona.
Last Update: 2004-Nov-27