Stars & Astronomy

This picture was recently taken by HIRISE. It shows dark stuff growing on water ice. The spotted area is about 3 miles across. The larger spots are about 500 feet across. It looks almost organic. Clearly something is different about the patches where this defrosting has started before any other locations. One possibility is that these are (frost covered) dark sand dunes that heat up more easily than the surrounding terrain. However, we will need to take a new image in the summer time to really know what is happening here.