- Original Caption Released with Image:
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In October 2006, Northern Mars is near the middle of its summer, and the
continued southern movement of the sun will have two main impacts on
imaging: The illumination will get worse as eventually the entire polar
region will be in darkness during winter, and northern hemispheric dust
storms and polar cloudiness will obscure the surface. Because now is the
best time to be imaging the north polar region until 2008, the team using
the Context Camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is devoting much
of its imaging resources to acquiring images of the polar region. This
image shows a north polar mosaic from the orbiter's Mars Color Imager
inscribed with rectangles indicating the coverage acquired by Context
Camera in less than two weeks of September and October, 2006. Following
conjunction (when Mars is nearly behind the sun from Earth's perspective),
the team will devote as much of November as the atmosphere permits to
imaging the polar region.Marked in red on this map is the footprint of the
Context Camera image shown at PIA01930.
- Image Credit:
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NASA/JPL/MSSS
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