Pathological Geomorphology... In Spaaaaaaace!

Via Emily Lakdawalla, blogger extraordinaire at The Planetary Society, I have just come across The IAG Planetary Geomorphology Working Group's Image of the Month. Here's May's image......and here's the index. I found the description fairly accessible, though I think you'd want a good background in geofundamentals to make sense of it. Putting it another way, it's not as technical as many journal articles I've tried (with varying degrees of success) to slog through... but if you don't know your geo, chem, planetary geo, spectroscopy, etc. at least a little, it'll be a tough go. Which is where Emily steps in (same link as the first one above): not only does she provide a stripped-down, translated explanation of the results, she provides some really useful and interesting background information for what we're seeing in the images above. For example, (click for full size) (Credit: Emily Lakdawalla ) the graphic below compares two aspects of imaging satellites orbiting Mars. The size of the squares represent the pixel size of the images- essentially the resolution- while the height of the stack represents the number of discrete spectral bands the satellite can resolve.

I'm going to make you read at least Emily's post to find the results and interpretation for the tres kewl landscape shown above. And I'm really looking forward to going through the previous entries in this series. There's one on Phobos that I'm particularly stoked about. See ya!