Blue Dunes on Mars

Alexa

traveller space dreamer
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This is really cool ! NASA released a photo from Lyot Crater showing blue dunes. I wonder what lies beneath and what they are made of.

pia22512.jpg


Once in a Blue Dune
 
Looks like a concentration of some type of mineral.
 
Mars is covered with iron compounds, and iron compounds can be very different colours depending on how the electrons between atoms are shared.

Mars normally gets its red colour from Iron (III) Oxide - aka rust - but I'd guess the above picture shows something like an accumulation of Iron (II) Sulphate, which is blue.
 
Surely there must be giant sandworms in the vicinity? ;) (I think spice is said to have a blue luminescence in one of those books.)
 
Mars is covered with iron compounds, and iron compounds can be very different colours depending on how the electrons between atoms are shared.

Mars normally gets its red colour from Iron (III) Oxide - aka rust - but I'd guess the above picture shows something like an accumulation of Iron (II) Sulphate, which is blue.

One of the rovers should confirm the composition one of these days. This could support a human mission and excavation machines for future mines. Maybe Mars is the new Eldorado. A very expensive one, at least for the moment.
 
One thing I find interesting (which no doubt will be due to differences in density, grain size etc.) is the totally different form of the dunes, much larger ones built of much smaller ones, whereas the surrounding dunes are consistently relatively medium in size.

Also the fact that there is so little mixing, there are some traces of the blue on the surrounding dune, but assuming the 'blue deposit' is ancient (which seems likely for it be ground down small enough to form dunes) it seems surprising to me that it is so distinct from the surrounding material.
 
I found the dunes in the field near it even more interesting. They must be of a dense/heavy material to be so defined.

ESP_053406_2295.jpg


K2
 
I found the dunes in the field near it even more interesting. They must be of a dense/heavy material to be so defined.

ESP_053406_2295.jpg


K2
Or is it actually the opposite for them to have stayed (floated) above the surrounding material. Or maybe they just have to be larger particles; if you stir up a container of different sized gravel all of the same rock (and therefore density) don't the larger particles always end up on the surface?
 

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