Studying the face is more than just a diversion, though.
The Happy Face crater snapped by HiRISE on December 13, 2020. Monitoring features like this helps us understand longer term climate trends on the Red Planet, says researcher Ross Beyer Measuring these changes throughout the Martian year help scientists understand the annual deposition and removal of polar frost, Beyer said. And monitoring these sites over long periods helps us understand longer term climate trends on the Red Planet.
The smile on the figure appears larger because of how much frost has been lost to thermal erosion, revealing more of the surface.
NGC 613, a barred spiral galaxy 67 million light-years away in the southern constellation of Sculptor, shows its stunning stellar markings in this image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
11 JANUARY 2021
Tithonium Chasma is one big canyon. At a staggering 810 kilometres (503 miles) long, it s a large part of Valles Marineris - the biggest canyon system we know of in the whole Solar System.
This close-up image of the chasma was taken back in 2013 by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and was just featured as the HiRISE Picture of the Day.
The image shows around a kilometre (0.6 miles) of Mars terrain with torturous hills and valleys, but as you can see in the other images, when you start to zoom out, this is just one small section of a gigantic whole.
Anyone who's ever visited the Grand Canyon in the United States knows how massive it is. The Grand Canyon certainly lives up to its name, but it's got nothing