Colour plan view of a section of the image map mosaic ‘MC-11 East’
Colour plan view of a section of the image map mosaic ‘MC-11 East’
A total of 89 image strips acquired by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) operated by DLR on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft were combined by DLR researchers, FU Berlin and Leibnitz University of Hannover to create an extensive mosaic map of the Martian surface entitled ‘MC-11 East’. This image shows the southwestern section of the mosaic, which has a total area of 2.3 million square kilometres. At the lower left, in the southwest the upper reaches and two large side arms of the Ares Vallis outflow channel can be seen. The dark areas in and around the large impact crater, which has a diameter of around 100 kilometres, are dune fields formed from volcanic deposits. The image resolution in the mosaic is between 10 and 50 metres per pixel. Any small imaging and transmission errors, as well as possible atmospheric disturbances in the mosaics should be improved with new data during the remainder of the Mars Express mission, which runs until 2018.
