Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Mars North Pole MRO

MRO image of Mars North Pole

False color Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter image of a side of the Chasma Boreale, a canyon in the polar ice cap of the North pole of Mars. Light browns are layers of surface dust greys and blues are layers of water and carbon dioxide ice. Regular geometric cracking is indicative of higher concentrations of water ice.

edit 1 edit caption per MER-C:This false-color subframe shows the north polar layered deposits at top and darker materials at bottom exposed in a scarp at the head of Chasma Boreale, a large canyon eroded into the layered deposits. The polar layered deposits appear red because of dust mixed within them, but are ice-rich as indicated by previous observations. The water ice in the layered deposits is probably responsible for the pattern of fractures seen near the top of the scarp. The darker material below the layered deposits may have been deposited as sand dunes, as indicated by the cross-bedding (truncation of curved lines) seen near the middle of the scarp. It appears that brighter, ice-rich layers were deposited between the dark dunes in places.

This is an aesthetically pleasing image of a very awe inspiring subject - an ice canyon on another planet. It illustrates the layering of the ice cap and shows evidence for the presence of liquid water in a way that text alone could hardly match. It is very high resolution, and free from artifacts. In fact, I downsampled it from an original 4000 x 10000px because the upload seemed unable to handle a 21MB file. It appears in Planum Boreum. Created by NASA so no copyright.

• Nominate and support. - Debivort 06:08, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
• Support Per everything above, although it would be good if there was a key of some sort. Leon 11:17, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

• A key to what? I think I've put in all the technical info that comes strictly with the image, but as a HiRISE image it was probably made in visible frequencies, and has sub-meter resolution! Debivort 16:30, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

• You might want to copy and paste the caption here. MER-C 03:04, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

• Support very nice. --Bridgecross 14:21, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
• Comment. I wouldn't say it is free from artifacts. I noticed a vertical red line about 1/4 of the way across the image. It seems to stretch across the entire image from top to bottom but is more noticable in some places more than others. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 21:38, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

• Good call. I'll try an edit later tonight. Debivort 01:33, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
• So it seems like some of the CCD elements are variably sensitive, leading to darker or lighter red streaks during the orbital scanning. I guess there won't be much servicing of the instrument, sadly. I did some adjustments to the red channel, and reduced the streakiness, especially in the dark regions. Debivort 02:43, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

• Weak oppose, it's a very confusing image and gives me no sense of what I'm looking at. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 00:04, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

• Really? Even with the caption? Debivort 01:33, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

• Christ, the caption makes it worse. How can I pull anything informative out of that wall of text? Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 14:09, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

• Strong Support Per nom. This picture is incredible. Sharkface217 01:18, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
• Support per nom. MER-C 03:04, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
• Comment. Man, we can create a separate article for that caption. Twice as long as the pic? I had to scroll down two screens to read it all ;-). Sometimes less is more. --Dschwen 08:55, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Or just make the pictures wider... --antilived ^{T | C | G} 09:10, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Nah, that's too easy ;-) --Dschwen 10:40, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

What I meant was to put the HiROC description on the image page itself. MER-C 12:58, 16 December 2006 (UTC)