Monday, January 28, 2013

Banded Bedrock in Terra Sabaea


Terra Sabaea is the region of ancient highlands north of the Hellas impact basin.

The enhanced color image shows bands of bedrock with different colors. Such colorful bedrock is typical of ancient Mars, when water played a more active role in altering minerals, and multiple geologic processes were very active (impact, volcanism, fluvial, tectonic).

The ridges or bright or dark lines that cut across the layers mark faults, places where the crust fractured and accommodated motions. A field geologist could spend years mapping the geology of the terrain covered by this image.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

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