On Thursday, NASA released a stunning photo of a sea of dunes on Mars.
It also shows wind-sculpted lines around Mars’s icy northern polar cap.
The portion captured in the image represents an area that is 31 kilometers (19 miles) wide, NASA said. However, the Sea of Dunes covers an area the size of Texas.
The photo is a false color image, which means that the colors are representative of temperatures. Blue represents cooler climes, and shades of yellow mark “sun-heated dunes,” the US space agency wrote.
A sea of dark dunes surrounds Mars’s northern polar cap. (NASA / JPL-Caltech / ASU)
The photo was taken from a combination of images captured by the Thermal Emission Imaging System instrument on the Mars Odyssey orbiter, NASA wrote.
The breathtaking images, captured from December 2002 to November 2004, were released to mark Odyssey’s 20th anniversary.
The Mars Odyssey orbiter is a robotic spacecraft orbiting Mars that uses a thermal imaging camera to detect evidence of water and ice on the planet.
It was launched in 2001, making it the longest-operating Mars spacecraft in history.
This article was originally published by Business Insider.
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