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These dendritic patterns are formed by many seasons of hot and cold weather, which cause the land to freeze and thaw out. This changes the landscape, creating a series of fractals that continue forever on southern Mars.
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This is a Martian gully, which has frost on it (the white color - just like frost on Earth). The lines of the gully look like a dried up river, and the seasonal changes help to reveal the features of landscapes as the weather changes the surface of the planet.
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Although this looks more like a psychedelic painting than a planet, what you see is actually carbon dioxide frost mixed with dust on sand dunes. The sand is darker colored than the frost.
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This is another confusing image that looks less like a planet's surface and more like something seen through a microscope. It's actually just an aerial view of Martian terrain. This southern area of polar ice is made from frozen carbon dioxide, which melts in the summer and reveals darker material underneath it in the summer season.
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What you're looking at here are actually gigantic sand dunes; the small dots and specks are huge boulders. The darker parts of the photo is fine grained sand, which shows up darker through images taken by the HiRise camera.
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These interesting shapes are sand dunes in the northern polar area of Mars. The white-ish substance you see on the red sand is ice, and the darker areas are basalt from ancient volcanic activity. These patches of snow will melt in the summer, just like on Earth.
Incredible Photos From A Wintery Mars
Mars, our closest red neighbor that, probably has more similarities to Earth than differences. Fact of the day: Mars has weather and seasons! Those Martians we are yet to meet experience winter and summer, with snow at the north and south poles growing and melting with the seasons. I know you're wondering what a Martian winter looks like, so here are some postcards from Mars in winter (sent from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance orbiter's HiRise camera). Heck, maybe Martians even make snowmen in the winter. It isn't impossible! Check out some more incredible photos of science and nature if you can't get enough of these.
This article first appeared on Wired.
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