September 2, 2010
High Resolution Mars Photographs
A shit load of high-resolution images of Mars.
Wired provides the details:
A new batch of sharp Martian close-ups from NASA’s HiRISE camera were released on Sept. 1. HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) has been circling Mars on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for four years now, taking dramatic photos of the red planet with a telephoto lens to make any paparazzi jealous. The camera can focus on objects the size of a beach ball from more than 180 miles away.
The 236 new images, taken between July 8 and July 31, cover the planet practically from pole to pole. They zoom in on terrain ranging from volcanic cones to cratered planes, from wind-swept dunes to crusts of ice. The images even capture evidence of ongoing geological processes on Mars today, like fresh craters that may have formed between January and June of this year.
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Damn.
It took longer than my father said to reach Mars. The landscape was always changing, which led us to forego the naming and claiming of place that had guided our Earthly rituals. Time passed in ways none of us had ever felt before, someone would leave for what seemed a few hours, only to find out that weeks had passed. In this way we grew old before we noticed, which made the end all the more bearable, slipping into another dream much like the one we were leaving. My father never told us, and we never knew. My sister said we never reached Mars, that our minds filled in the gaps that were left as we looked at the planet approaching ever so slowly through the slits in our craft. West with the night, up with the dark, I slept and dreamed of gathering burning drops of sunlight, plucking as if from a vine in a stellar garden all across the hull. Stars were small bits of burning blue, as if sliced from a diamond as big as my head, but the sun drops were smoldering, boiling but cool to the touch. I tried to eat one and woke up, a metallic taste lingering in my mouth. Later that month we reached the planet, and I found my father crying as he knelt in the dust.
That is beautiful, Amanda Mae.
Yes–Amanda Mae, this is splendid. Is it part of a novel you are working on? If not, it should be. It has a great resonance with Italo Calvino’s writing.
I am especially taken with “My sister said we never reached Mars, that our minds filled in the gaps that were left as we looked at the planet approaching ever so slowly through the slits in our craft.”
Thank you both, you are very encouraging! I hadn’t planned on writing any more of it, but maybe.
It is both haunting and very well written, Amae. I am taken both by the sentences and the sentiments.
God damn, Amanda, that’s really good.
[...] Amanda Mae Meyncke: It took longer than my father said to reach Mars. The landscape was always changing, which led us to forego the naming and claiming of place that had guided our Earthly rituals. Time passed in ways none of us had ever felt before, someone would leave for what seemed a few hours, only to find out that weeks had passed. In this way we grew old before we noticed, which made the end all the more bearable, slipping into another dream much like the one we were leaving. My father never told us, and we never knew. My sister said we never reached Mars, that our minds filled in the gaps that were left as we looked at the planet approaching ever so slowly through the slits in our craft. West with the night, up with the dark, I slept and dreamed of gathering burning drops of sunlight, plucking as if from a vine in a stellar garden all across the hull. Stars were small bits of burning blue, as if sliced from a diamond as big as my head, but the sun drops were smoldering, boiling but cool to the touch. I tried to eat one and woke up, a metallic taste lingering in my mouth. Later that month we reached the planet, and I found my father crying as he knelt in the dust. posted by Deron Bauman in awesome, family, fiction, from the comments, space | * | comment [...]