Pic of the Week: Yogi Bear Spotted on Mars

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Picture of the Martian surface captured by the orbiting Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona)

This week’s image comes from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. You don’t need to look too hard to see a bear in this photo.

Here is a summary of what you are seeing from the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, which operates HiRISE:

There’s a hill with a V-shaped collapse structure (the nose), two craters (the eyes), and a circular fracture pattern (the head). The circular fracture pattern might be due to the settling of a deposit over a buried impact crater. Maybe the nose is a volcanic or mud vent and the deposit could be lava or mud flows?