03/12/2025
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Is it an insect? An odd fossil? An otherworldly eye, or perhaps a walnut? No, it’s an intriguing type of martian butterfly noticed by ESA’s Mars Specific.
Bugs aren’t commonplace on Mars, so it’s no shock that that is no butterfly as we all know it. It’s truly a type of crater, shaped as an area rock hurtled in the direction of the Purple Planet and collided with its red-brown floor.
The collision triggered two distinct lobes of fabric to be flung outwards to the crater’s north and south, creating two outstretched ‘wings’ of raised floor. The wings of this specific butterfly crater are fairly undefined and irregular, however may be seen extending to the decrease left and higher proper of the primary walnut-esque crater proven right here.
This crater measures roughly 20 km from east to west and 15 km from north to south. It lies within the Idaeus Fossae area of Mars, within the planet’s northern lowlands. The crater and its wings may be seen in additional element in a brand new video produced by the Mars Specific HRSC crew, which simulates what it could be prefer to slowly circle it – and its environment – from above.
One other instance of a butterfly crater, this time in Mars’s southern highlands, is highlighted in Mars Specific’s pictures of Hesperia Planum.
Uncommon shapes
Usually we might anticipate materials to be thrown outwards in all instructions by a crater-causing collision. Nevertheless, we all know that the area rock that sculpted this martian butterfly got here in at a low, shallow angle, ensuing within the attention-grabbing and atypical shapes seen right here: the butterfly’s ‘physique’ – the primary crater itself – is unusually oval in form, and the wings are irregular.
Among the particles forming the wings (principally seen simply above the crater, and labelled within the picture under – which is annotated in case you click on on it) additionally seems smoother and extra rounded, virtually paying homage to a mudslide. This means that it has combined with water or ice from beneath the floor of Mars – ice that maybe melted through the crater influence itself. That is recognized extra technically as ‘fluidised’ materials, and is seen often on Mars.
Crumpling lava
The butterfly crater may draw the eye, but it’s far from the only feature of interest here. The rest of the frame is largely flat, lending the spotlight to a cluster of steep, flat-topped rocky outcrops – known as mesas – to the left (shown in the zoom in perspective view below). The higher patches of ground here have been slowly worn away, with the remaining hills being those that have managed to resist erosion over time.
The mesas stand out clearly against the tan-coloured surroundings due to the layers of dark material that have been exposed along their edges. As on Earth, this material is probably rich in magnesium and iron, and created by volcanism. This region likely saw quite a bit of volcanism in the past, with lava and ash deposits building up over time and being buried by other material through the years.
Signs of lava can be seen here in ‘wrinkle ridges’: folded patterns that likely formed here when lava flowed, cooled, and contracted, causing the surface to crumple.
The bigger picture
This patch of Mars gets its name from Idaeus Fossae, a broad system of valleys lying a few kilometres to the west (top) of frame. One such valley can be seen to the right (north) of the image here below, and other less prominent valleys and ridges are scattered across the frame.
As labelled in the associated context map, most of Idaeus Fossae is found just next to a sharp, 2-km-high cliff-face marking the edge of the Tempe Terra plateau.
Mars Express has been capturing and exploring Mars’s many landscapes since it launched in 2003. The orbiter has mapped the planet’s surface at unprecedented resolution, in colour, and in three dimensions for over two decades now, returning insights that have drastically changed our understanding of our planetary neighbour (read more about Mars Express and its findings here).
The Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) was developed and is operated by the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR). The systematic processing of the camera data took place at the DLR Institute of Space Research in Berlin-Adlershof. The working group of Planetary Science and Remote Sensing at Freie Universität Berlin used the data to create the image products shown here.
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