A meteoroid impact on Mars triggers a dusty avalanche

12 June 2018 Astronomy Now

A meteoroid recently slammed into the side of a hillside on Mars, exploding on impact, destabilising the slope and triggering a long avalanche. The crater only measures about five meters (16 feet) across, but the avalanche left a dark trail of dry dust stretching a full kilometre (0.62 miles) down the side of a slope in a hilly region of the red planet. The image was captured by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment – HiRISE – aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft.

A dark, dusty avalanche stretches away from a small impact crater on the side of a martian hill, running away toward the top of this picture from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

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See the waning crescent Moon meet the dawn planets, 15–16 April 2020

9 April 2020 Ade Ashford

There’s a lot of planetary activity in the dawn sky in mid-April. If you’re an early riser in the British Isles, let the waning crescent Moon be your guide to the naked-eye planets Jupiter, Saturn and Mars on 15 and 16 April 2020. Typical 7×50 or 10×50 binoculars will show these attractive conjunctions well, while the smallest of telescopes also reveal some of Jupiter’s bright Galilean moons.