Valles Marineris - Point Perspective:
Mosaic of the Valles Marineris hemisphere of Mars projected into point
perspective, a view similar to that which one would see from a spacecraft.
The viewer's distance is 2,500 kilometers from the surface of the planet.
The mosaic is composed of 102 Viking Orbiter images of Mars.
The center of the scene (lat -7°, lon 78°) shows the entire Valles Marineris canyon system,
over 3,000 kilometers long and up to 8 kilometers deep, extending from Noctis Labyrinthus,
the arcuate system of graben to the west, to the chaotic terrain to the east.
Many huge ancient river channels begin from the chaotic terrain and north-central
canyons and run north.
Many of the channels flowed into a basin called Acidalia Planitia,
which is the dark area in the extreme north of this picture.
The three Tharsis volcanoes (dark red spots), each about 25 kilometers high,
are visible to the west.
South of Valles Marineris is very ancient terrain covered by many impact craters.
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.
The image shown here is a much reduced ARVAL's rendering
(a 24 bit JPG file, 16 million colors, 40KB, 400x400 pixels),
of the original. [North is below, East to the right of the image]
The original image (a 24 bit JPG file, 16 million colors, 257KB, 1552x1552 pixels), can be obtained from the Photo Gallery - Mars section, at the National Space Science Data Center.
Updated: June 29 '97
Best seen with MS Internet Explorer.
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