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A large sand dune appears blue in this enhanced color photo, taken on January 24, 2018 by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter satellite. The dune is actually gray but stands out because it differs from its environment by its composition and / or its grain size.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona
A large sand dune blazes in an electric blue on the red planet in a beautiful photo of NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
The large dune complex is embedded in a classic crescent-shaped dune field on the Lyot crater floor of 236 kilometers, located about 50 degrees north of the Martian equator.
"This particular dune, appearing as turquoise in augmented color, is made of finer material and / or has a composition different from that of surrounding sand, NASA officials have recently written in a description of the photo. Imaging Science Experiment) on January 24th. [See more amazing Mars photos by NASA’s MRO]
Before you get too excited by the exotic geological possibilities on the extraterrestrial worlds: As this reference to "augmented color" suggests, the dune is not really blue.
The HiRISE photos "have min-max lengths in each color image to increase the contrast," said Alfred McEwen, Senior Researcher of HiRISE, Planetary Geologist at the University of Arizona, on the Inverse Web site . "The dunes are actually gray, but appear relatively blue after such stretching, because most of Mars is red."
The $ 720 million MRO mission arrived in orbit around the red planet in March 2006. Since then, the spacecraft has carried out various works, ranging from looking for signs of water activity to landing sites. The orbiter also relays NASA Mars surface data, such as Opportunity and Curiosity rovers, back to Earth.
HiRISE is an instrument with incredibly precise eyes. The camera can solve features as small as a coffee table on the surface of Mars from the near-polar orbit of MRO, whose altitude has varied over the years from 250 to 316 km.
Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally posted on Space.com.
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