Dunes within Dunes
Another abstract art piece, courtesy of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This time we’re looking at dunes of basaltic sand on the floor of Proctor Crater in the southern highlands of Mars. The distance from top to bottom is roughly six kilometers. In the detail to the right, smaller, brighter dunes can be seen between the dark drifts.
If you look at images like these as art, who is the artist? Nature, certainly, but who else? The orbiter? The JPL teams that fly it into position? The University of Arizona teams that run the camera and process the pictures? The countless other people who form other indispensable links in the chain? It must be all of the above -- people and machines alike.
August 10, 2007
Riding with Robots:
