Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

This amazing image is not tree bark — it’s Mars. Click here for image downloading options. (It’s quite large.)

Martian landforms have been shaped by winds, water, lava flow, seasonal icing and other forces over millennia. This view shows color variations in bright layered deposits on a plateau near Juventae Chasma in the Valles Marineris region of Mars. A brown mantle covers portions of the bright deposits. Researchers have found that these bright layered deposits contain opaline silica and iron sulfates.

So yeah, I decided Friday will be picspam day. We’re starting off today with a new release from HubbleSite, an artist’s concept of exoplanet HR 8799b. I love “space art”, especially art of distant planets, and the colors really grabbed me in this one.

This was a NASA Image of the Day earlier this week, and shows… well, I’ll let them tell you:

The boosters of the Soyuz rocket that transported Expedition 19 to the space station are shown here as the Soyuz TMA-14 spacecraft and boosters are assembled on March 23, 2009, at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The Soyuz successfully launched on March 26, carrying Expedition 19 Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineer Mike Barratt, as well as a U.S. spaceflight participant [Charles Simonyi].

This last one is a bit more esoteric, picspam-wise: pleasurable to me, you may feel differently. I have a degree in geology and worked with data from a previous moon-mapping mission (Clementine), so seeing the first results from the Mini RF radar mapper currently orbiting the Moon thrilled me to bits. This image is of an impact crater near the North Pole of the moon, Rozhdestvensky K:

The crater Rozhdestvensky K is a moderately sized (42 km diameter) impact crater on the southern rim of the larger crater Rozhdestvensky, near the north pole of the Moon. These spectacular SAR images show massive slumping, as result of wall collapse caused by gravity. These images demonstrate that Mini-SAR images will be of great value in deciphering the geological evolution of the Moon.

The slumps are the lines curving opposite to the curve of the crater; basically, it’s like a landslide. But on the Moon. Er. Well. Here’s a more familiar-looking example (right). And here’s a page with illustrations and a good description because I’m sure you all totally care about this geology term and what it means. Eh, I’m a dork, but I’m *thorough*.

Oh, and by the way, that’s capital-M Moon. If you want to argue, click that link. If you’re a stickler and you want a good laugh, click that link.

And thus ends your picspam for this Friday!