April 14, 2018
In the grand ledger of cosmic time, a human life is breathtakingly brief. But brevity is not insignificance.
Martian Chiaroscuro
Birthday · April 14, 2018
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APOD published April 14, 2018. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Deep shadows create dramatic contrasts between light and dark in this high-resolution close-up of the martian surface. Recorded on January 24, 2014 by the HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the scene spans about 1.5 kilometers. From 250 kilometers above the Red Planet the camera is looking down at a sand dune field in a southern highlands crater. Captured when the Sun was about 5 degrees above the local horizon, only the dune crests were caught in full sunlight. A long, cold winter is coming to the southern hemisphere and bright ridges of seasonal frost line the martian dunes.