As Christmas approaches, even Mars shows off a festive spirit, the European Space Agency’s Mars Express has spotted a strange image of a winged angel covering the red planet.
Mars Express spotted two seasonal shadows on the surface of the Red Planet, where the wings of a vivid angelic figure, surrounded by a halo, could be seen.
It sweeps across the top and outside of the frame in an image captured by the high-resolution stereo camera on the spacecraft orbiting Mars.
Next to the angel figure there is a large heart, as the shapes seem to jump from the surface of Mars with a red color, its dark color is a result of the formation of dune fields consisting of sand rich in dark minerals that make up the rocks, which are similar on Earth.
The spacecraft camera found this ceremonial scene in the south polar region of Mars, with the pole itself located directly outside the frame on the right.
The Antarctic is usually covered by an ice sheet 1.5 kilometers thick, about 400 kilometers wide and 1.6 million cubic kilometers in volume, and more than 12% of it is water ice.
But with the southern hemisphere of Mars currently experiencing summer, the image reveals the planet’s southern polar ice storages at their annual lowest levels.
The image of the angel and the heart is made up of different features. The angel’s hand, as if reaching the left, is believed to be a large sublimation crater – a feature that forms when ice turns into gas and leaves empty pockets and depressions in the planet’s surface.
Meanwhile, the impact crater forms the angel’s head and aura. It is likely that it was created when an object from space collided with the crust of Mars.
The core protrudes by a steep line of cliffs or steep slopes caused by erosion processes, and is separated from the dark stretch of dunes below.
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