The South Polar terrain on Mars contains landforms unlike any that we see on Earth, so much that a new vocabulary is required to describe them. The word “araneiform” means “spider-like.” There are radially organized channels on Mars that look spider-like, but we don’t want to confuse anyone by talking about “spiders” when we really mean “channels,” not “bugs.”

The shows an example of “connected araneiform topography,” terrain that is filled with spider-like channels whose arms branch and connect to each other. Gas flows through these channels until it encounters a vent, where it escapes out to the atmosphere, carrying dust along with it. The dark dust is blown around by the prevailing wind.

This second example shows a different region of the same image where the channels are not radially organized. In this region they form a dense tangled network of tortuous strands. We refer to this as “lace.”



Written by: Candy Hansen  (12 December 2007)


This is a stereo pair with PSP_002652_0930.