Mars Ice Lake
July 29th, 2005 at 7:40“BBC: Ice Lake Found on Red Planet”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4727847.stm
!/images/marslake.jpg(View of the 35 km wide crater.)!
bq. The highly visible ice is sitting in a crater which is 35 km (23 miles) wide, with a maximum depth of about two km (1.2 miles).
It looks like the ice lake is roughly one third the width of the crater. Given the estimate of 35 km (23 miles) for the crater diameter the ice lake is probably easily 7 miles (11.2 km) in diameter itself which is a pretty decent sized lake. I tried finding a Spokane area lake of comparable size using google maps and most of them seemed smaller. I think the northern most section of Lake Coeur d’Alene in Idaho might be comparable though. It’s definitely a sizable deposit of ice though and could probably sustain some kind of base on Mars for a long, long time if one was located there.
*Update:* “Even bigger pictures”:http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEMGKA808BE_0.html at the ESA(European Space Agency) site.
July 29th, 2005 at 12:16 pm
[...] I don’t know how I ran across this link, but it’s interesting and has a GREAT photo. The picture is supposedly of an Ice Lake on Mars Beautiful coloration, I’m not sure if it’s false color or what. Obviously this has little to do with computers other than how the image was captured and transmitted, but it’s neat nonetheless. [...]