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Picture of the day -
November 4, 2006
The North Pole...On Mars!
Photo courtesy of NASA.
Today's picture features the North Pole of the planet Mars.
Just like earth, Mars spins on an axis as it makes its yearly trek
around the sun. It also has a north pole, a south pole and an
equator.
In this summertime photo, you can easily see that the Martian north
pole (in the top right corner) has an icecap consisting of frozen
carbon dioxide and frozen water. The water ice remains in place year
round, but the frozen carbon dioxide "melts" away at the height of
summer.
The lower-left quadrant of the photo shows several of the volcanoes
that dot the Martian surface, one of which is Olympus Mons, a
towering mountain which at roughly three times the height of
our own Mount Everest is the largest volcano in the solar system. The wispy white clouds seen hovering over the
landscape consist of water ice.
About the photo: NASA's Mars Global Surveyor captured this
amazing image of the "Red Planet" in May 2003.
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