Blink comparison of daytime and nighttime infrared views of Gale
crater During the day, the surface of Mars are heated by the
Sun, so a Mars Odyssey THEMIS daytime thermal infrared view
looks similar to a visible-light view. At night, rocks retain
heat better than dust, so rocky areas appear bright and dusty or
sandy areas appear dark. Rock composition and texture also
affects thermal inertia and the appearance of the materials at
night. More THEMIS data over Gale crater can be downloaded here.
The data was originally released on July 14, 2006. Copyright
holder: Emily Lakdawalla This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
License. Contact us to request publication permission from the
copyright holder. Original image data dated on or about August
17, 2012