A sea of dark dunes, carved by the wind in long lines, surround the north polar cap of Mars and cover an area as large as Texas. In this false color image, areas with cooler temperatures are recorded in bluer hues, while warmer features are shown in yellows and oranges.
The photo is a part of a special set of images captured by the Thermal Emission Imaging System instrument on the Mars Odyssey orbiter, NASA wrote in a statement.
As NASA explained in another post, the THEMIS “measures the surface temperature day and night, allowing scientists to determine what physical materials, such as rock, sand, or dust, exist. Its data reveals the presence of these materials based on how they heat up or cool down over the course of a Martian day.”