APOD: Martian Chiaroscuro (2020 Aug 29)

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APOD: Martian Chiaroscuro (2020 Aug 29)

Post by APOD Robot » Sat Aug 29, 2020 4:06 am

Image Martian Chiaroscuro

Explanation: Deep shadows create dramatic contrasts between light and dark in this high-resolution close-up of the martian surface. Recorded on January 24, 2014 by the HiRISE camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the scene spans about 1.5 kilometers. From 250 kilometers above the Red Planet the camera is looking down at a sand dune field in a southern highlands crater. Captured when the Sun was about 5 degrees above the local horizon, only the dune crests were caught in full sunlight. A long, cold winter was coming to the southern hemisphere and bright ridges of seasonal frost line the martian dunes. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, one of the oldest operating spacecraft at the Red Planet, celebrated the 15th anniversary of its launch from planet Earth on August 12.

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MarkBour
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Re: APOD: Martian Chiaroscuro (2020 Aug 29)

Post by MarkBour » Sat Aug 29, 2020 6:00 am

So artistic, I love it. It looks remarkably like fingerprints.
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Re: APOD: Martian Chiaroscuro (2020 Aug 29)

Post by DL MARTIN » Sat Aug 29, 2020 8:52 am

Suspiciously like fingerprints. perhaps!

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JohnD
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Re: APOD: Martian Chiaroscuro (2020 Aug 29)

Post by JohnD » Sat Aug 29, 2020 9:28 am

Fingerprints of the gods!

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Re: APOD: Martian Chiaroscuro (2020 Aug 29)

Post by XgeoX » Sat Aug 29, 2020 11:42 am

How magical would it be to be there to witness it. 5 degrees btw is when the sun first peeks over the trees in my neighborhood.
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Re: APOD: Martian Chiaroscuro (2020 Aug 29)

Post by orin stepanek » Sat Aug 29, 2020 12:07 pm

MarkBour wrote: Sat Aug 29, 2020 6:00 am So artistic, I love it. It looks remarkably like fingerprints.

marsHirise_ESP_035143_1325_1096.jpg

Weah; now we can track the culprit! :mrgreen:
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Re: APOD: Martian Chiaroscuro (2020 Aug 29)

Post by Sa Ji Tario » Sat Aug 29, 2020 3:48 pm

Palm-fingerprints accommodating the Earth's atmosphere, otherwise red would not be sand

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Re: APOD: Martian Chiaroscuro (2020 Aug 29)

Post by Sa Ji Tario » Sat Aug 29, 2020 3:50 pm

The twilight of the Earth is red or pink, that of Mars bluish

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Martian Koalascuro

Post by neufer » Sat Aug 29, 2020 6:44 pm

https://www.livescience.com/14007-koalas-human-fingerprints.html wrote:
<<A crime in a zoo's koala cage would probably confound the efforts of even the best detectives. Why? Because koalas, doll-sized marsupials that climb trees with babies on their backs, have fingerprints that are almost identical to human ones. Not even careful analysis under a microscope can easily distinguish the loopy, whirling ridges on koalas' fingers from our own.

Koalas aren't the only non-humans with fingerprints: Close human relatives such as chimps and gorillas have them as well. The remarkable thing about koala prints is that they seem to have evolved independently. On the evolutionary tree of life, primates and modern koalas' marsupial ancestors branched apart 70 million years ago. Scientists think the koala's fingertip features developed much more recently in its evolutionary history, because most of its close relatives (such as wombats and kangaroos) lack them.

For centuries, anatomists have intensely debated the purpose of fingerprints. According to the team of anatomists at the University of Adelaide in Australia who discovered koala fingerprints in 1996, koala prints may help explain the features' purpose. The clue lies in our shared way of grasping.

"Koalas … feed by climbing vertically onto the smaller branches of eucalyptus trees, reaching out, grasping handfuls of leaves and bringing them to the mouth," the researchers wrote in their landmark paper. "Therefore the origin of dermatoglyphes [fingerprints] is best explained as the biomechanical adaptation to grasping, which produces multidirectional mechanical influences on the skin. These forces must be precisely felt for fine control of movement and static pressures and hence require orderly organization of the skin surface."

Humans and chimps grasp; koalas grasp -- to do so, it helps to have fingerprints.>>
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Re: Martian Koalascuro

Post by johnnydeep » Sat Aug 29, 2020 9:25 pm

neufer wrote: Sat Aug 29, 2020 6:44 pm
https://www.livescience.com/14007-koalas-human-fingerprints.html wrote:
<<A crime in a zoo's koala cage would probably confound the efforts of even the best detectives. Why? Because koalas, doll-sized marsupials that climb trees with babies on their backs, have fingerprints that are almost identical to human ones. Not even careful analysis under a microscope can easily distinguish the loopy, whirling ridges on koalas' fingers from our own.

Koalas aren't the only non-humans with fingerprints: Close human relatives such as chimps and gorillas have them as well. The remarkable thing about koala prints is that they seem to have evolved independently. On the evolutionary tree of life, primates and modern koalas' marsupial ancestors branched apart 70 million years ago. Scientists think the koala's fingertip features developed much more recently in its evolutionary history, because most of its close relatives (such as wombats and kangaroos) lack them.

For centuries, anatomists have intensely debated the purpose of fingerprints. According to the team of anatomists at the University of Adelaide in Australia who discovered koala fingerprints in 1996, koala prints may help explain the features' purpose. The clue lies in our shared way of grasping.

"Koalas … feed by climbing vertically onto the smaller branches of eucalyptus trees, reaching out, grasping handfuls of leaves and bringing them to the mouth," the researchers wrote in their landmark paper. "Therefore the origin of dermatoglyphes [fingerprints] is best explained as the biomechanical adaptation to grasping, which produces multidirectional mechanical influences on the skin. These forces must be precisely felt for fine control of movement and static pressures and hence require orderly organization of the skin surface."

Humans and chimps grasp; koalas grasp -- to do so, it helps to have fingerprints.>>
Cool. This gives me an idea for my next crime spree :D
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