Thalia Reyes (left) and Maria Murillo, physics students at Pasadena’s John Muir High School, try to turn on a light-emitting diode (LED) with a battery made from a potato, a zinc nail, and a penny during a CCC-assisted lab session. Photo by their physics teacher, Dave Herman.

Martian Avalanches

JPL’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured the first-ever picture of Martian avalanches in action. The dramatic image below, taken on February 19, shows billowing clouds marking the course of dust and ice spilling down a 700-meter-high cliff that slopes at more than 60 degrees.

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera shot a swath of terrain some six kilometers wide by more than 60 long near the Martian north pole. The frame captured at least four avalanches—in this close-up of one of them, the dust cloud is 180 meters across. The white to the left in this false-color rendering is carbon-dioxide frost at the top of the cliff.

This action snapshot provides a rare glimpse of the Red Planet’s geology in motion. Scientists will compare it with previous shots of the area, and more observations through the Martian summer might reveal details about how the ice erodes. —MW