A European satellite has seen an incredibly realistic angelic figure – complete with wings, halo and heart – in the southern polar region of Mars. It looks like a Martian artist painted the scene to wish us peace and joy for the holidays, but there is a perfectly good scientific explanation for the surreal display.
This festive scene was captured by the high-resolution camera on board the European Space Agency Mars Express orbiter. Normally, this part of the Red Planet is covered with a thickness of 1.6 km (1.6 km)-km thick) ice cover, but it is currently summer in the southern polar region of Mars. With the ice temporarily gone, Mars Express managed to capture photos of the landscape, which gives us another example of pareidolia (Mars is notorious to show us things that aren’t really there).
Indeed, this apparent painting of an angel with a halo, with an outstretched right arm and a heart by his side, is the result of several geological processes, such as the ESA explains.
The contrasting colors are not on top of a creamy cinnamon and cocoa latte, but rather a sprawling dune area filled with dark, rock-forming minerals (usually pyroxene and olivine, which are also available on Earth).
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What appears to be the tip of the angel’s right hand is probably a large sublimation pit. These wells form when ice immediately turns to gas, leaving empty holes. Sublimation pits can be seen elsewhere in the solar system, including the dwarf planet Pluto.
The halo – arguably the most eye-catching feature of the festive scene – is actually the rim of an impact crater. Anytime, whatever object it was it collided with Mars, kicking up several layers of deposits from below. The angel’s head is composed of these dark deposits, which happen to rest in the old impact crater and give the impression of a surrounding halo.
To the right of the figure is a steep slope, which outlines much of the center. Created from millions of years of erosion, this striking formation features cliffs and steep slopes, and some truly dark deposits whose origins are unclear.
As the ESA notes, scientists believe these dark materials “once existed deeper below the surface in layers of material formed by ancient volcanic activity.” And although this material was once buried, “it has since been brought to the surface by continuous impacts and erosion, then spread more widely around the planet by Martian winds.”
That’s how this super cool optical illusion forged by some equally cool geological processes. Mars Express has seen fascinating features on Mars before, including an 50 miles wide (50 miles wide) ice rink in Korolev crater and a giant one cinnamon roll on the north Pole.