Zoom into an Ancient and Fractured Martian Landscape

Peer at this new image of Mars’ Ladon Basin and you get some notion of the violence that took place during the early history of Mars.

ESA’s Mars Express imaged the southern part of the partially buried crater informally known as Ladon Basin. The basin is the site of an ancient impact which is about 440 kilometers (273 miles) across. On an earthly scale, Ladon Basin would stretch from London to Paris or fill up most of Colorado.

These zoomable images allows you to quickly zoom into whatever part of the picture you want to see close up. Just slide the scale (between the plus and minus sign) at the bottom of the application to zoom in.

Large-scale evidence of water draws scientists to explore this area of Mars. With signs of ancient lakes and rivers, NASA considered nearby Holden and Eberswalde craters as possible landing sites for the Mars Science Laboratory, or Curiosity. The car-sized rover is now slated to land in Gale Crater on August 6.

The most stunning part of this image are the interconnected craters Sigli and Shambe. Elliptical craters like these form when asteroids or comets smack into the surface of planets and moons at a shallow angle. A fluid-like ejecta pattern surrounds the craters suggesting that subsurface ice melted during the impact. Other smaller craters can be seen dotting this blanket of material.

3D Perspective: This computer-generated perspective view was created using data obtained from the High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on ESA’s Mars Express. Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum). Zoomify by John Williams.

Explore the deeply fractured floor of the twin craters to the left in the image. Scientists believe both craters formed when a large meteorite splintered into two chunks just before impact. The joined craters then filled with sediment. Fractures also extend outside the image in concentric rings.

Throughout the image, a distant echo of water is etched in the now dry landscape. Above the connected craters, to the west in this image, creek-like channels can be seen leading into the nearby impact basin to the right (or north) indicating that in Mars’ distant past, water flowed across this landscape. Instruments aboard Mars Express and other Mars orbiters have detected clay minerals within deposits in and around Ladon Basin. These deposits suggest a relatively long presence of liquid water in the region’s past.

To get a different perspective, grab your red/blue 3D glasses and zoom into the image below.

Anaglyph: Ladon Valles imaged during revolution 10602 on 27 April 2012 by ESA’s Mars Express using the High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). Data from HRSC’s nadir channel and one stereo channel are combined to produce this anaglyph 3D image that can be viewed using stereoscopic glasses with red–green or red–blue filters. Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum). Zoomify by John Williams.

Lead image Caption: High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) nadir and colour channel data taken during revolution 10602 on 27 April 2012 by ESA’s Mars Express have been combined to form a natural-colour view of the Ladon Valles region. Centred at around 18°S and 329°E, this image has a ground resolution of about 20 m per pixel. Zoomify by John Williams.

John Williams is a science writer and owner of TerraZoom, a Colorado-based web development shop specializing in web mapping and online image zooms. He also writes the award-winning blog, StarryCritters, an interactive site devoted to looking at images from NASA’s Great Observatories and other sources in a different way. A former contributing editor for Final Frontier, his work has appeared in the Planetary Society Blog, Air & Space Smithsonian, Astronomy, Earth, MX Developer’s Journal, The Kansas City Star and many other newspapers and magazines.