NASA Photo Captures Elephant on Mars
Updated: Tuesday, 10 Apr 2012, 9:07 AM CDT
Published : Tuesday, 10 Apr 2012, 9:07 AM CDT
(EndPlay Staff Reports) - NASA has photographed an elephant on Mars.
Not really, but there's a striking resemblance.
The photo, taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter , features terrain that looks like an elephant's eye and trunk.
"This is a good example of the phenomena 'pareidolia,' where we see things that aren't really there," University of Arizona planetary geologist Alfred McEwan wrote on the university's HiRISE website.
He wrote that the image shows a dried lava flow in Elysium Planitia, the youngest flood-lava province on Mars.
Like on Earth, he said, most lava floods on Mars are probably emplaced or put into position over years or decades.
"An elephant can walk away from the slowly advancing flow front," McEwan wrote on the website. "However, there is also evidence for much rapidly flowing lava on Mars, a true flood of lava. In this instance, maybe this elephant couldn't run away fast enough."
MSNBC reported that HiRISE has sent back more than 22,000 images of Mars' surface over the past six years.
Space.com said that the orbiter has circled Mars since 2006 and has sent back more data to Earth than all other interplanetary missions combined.
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