Geology Picture of the Week 2fer: November 16-22, 2003

NASA Earth Observatory | November 17, 2003 | NASA and various

[cogitator]

2-for-1: Part 1 of today's Geology Picture of the Week installment was inspired by NASA's Earth Observatory Image of the Day for yesterday:

Craters of the Moon National Monument

However, though the image there is impressive for overall scope, I wanted to get closer. So from this page:

Field Photographs (by Bruce Railsback, University of Georgia geology)

I found these (both are reduced size; click on them to see the full-size pictures):

Aerial photograph of flood basalts on Snake River plain:

Sequence of flood basalts exposed at Twin Falls, Idaho

Part 2 is a remarkable image of an delta on Mars, which carries the interpretation that surficial water in the geological history of Mars was at times fairly persistent. What struck me about this image was the remarkable similarity between what you can see here and the bird's foot delta of the Mississippi River in the Gulf of Mexico.

I recommend reading the whole description from the Web site linked below. It has some sections of the image highlighted to show show how this feature is interpreted by planetary geologists.

Distributory fan near Holden Crater

As an interesting aside, before the massive amount of imagery that was available from the Mars Surveyor and the Mars Global Observers (unsung success stories against the more publicized Mars mission failures), many of the poorly-imaged features at the resolution of the orbital Viking sensors were interpreted as flood basalt features. Now that it's possible to look at much better images, it's possible to make much more certain inferences about Mars' geological history -- without actually being there.

[cogitator]

It's too bad that the current set of landers headed for Mars can't get around more.

[cogitator]

** ping **

[richardtavor]

Looks more like a High Constructive, Lobate Delta.

[cogitator]

Looks more like a High Constructive, Lobate Delta.

And it looks like you are far more knowledgeable about deltaic processes than I. I'll take your word(s) for it!

[WaterDragon]

REALLY awesome! Thansk!

[WSGilcrest]

Hey, I've been there. This is also where Evil Knievil attempted to jump the Snake on his rocket bike. They've erected a monument commerating the event.