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They make up the classical light and dark marking seen on Mars through telescopes. (See Classical albedo features on Mars.) The markings are caused by differing proportions of dust covering the surface. Martian dust is bright reddish ochre in color, while the bedrock and soil is dark gray (the color of unaltered basalt).
Syrtis Major is the dark area projecting upward in the center right. Note orographic clouds over Olympus and Elysium Montes (left and right, respectively). No topography is visible on Mars from Earth-based telescopes. The bright areas and dark markings on pre-spaceflight-era maps of Mars are all albedo features. (See Classical albedo features ...
No topography is visible on Mars from Earth. The bright areas and dark markings seen through a telescope are albedo features. The bright, red-ochre areas are locations where fine dust covers the surface. Bright areas (excluding the polar caps and clouds) include Hellas, Tharsis, and Arabia Terra. The dark gray markings represent areas that the ...
When occurring near the top of a dune, dark sand may cascade down the dune leaving dark surface streaks – streaks that might appear at first to be trees standing in front of the lighter regions. A new phenomenon known as slope streaks has been uncovered by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. These features appear on crater ...
The dark features were then thought by some to be indications of Martian vegetation, since they changed shape and intensity over the course of the Martian year. They are now known to be areas where the wind has swept away the paler dust, exposing a darker surface, often basaltic rock; so their borders change in response to windstorms on the ...
Areography, also known as the geography of Mars, is a subfield of planetary science that entails the delineation and characterization of regions on Mars. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] Areography is mainly focused on what is called physical geography on Earth; that is the distribution of physical features across Mars and their cartographic representations.
The dark areas of Mars are characterised by the mafic rock-forming minerals olivine, pyroxene, and plagioclase feldspar. These minerals are the primary constituents of basalt, a dark volcanic rock that also makes up the Earth's oceanic crust and the lunar maria. Ared Andromeda THEMIS colour image of olivine basalts in the Valles Marineris.
Cerberus is dark area to left of center. Cerberus is a large "dark spot" (an albedo feature) located on Mars and named after the mythical dog Cerberus.The arcuate (curved) markings in the upper right are in the Amazonis plains and may be sand drifts.