Abstract
The relief of polygonal structures at the Phoenix landing site on Mars has been determined with the improved photoclinometry method from the images acquired with the HiRISE camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The investigations showed that, within 1 km from the landing site, the topography amplitude of the relief on the surface scales of 5.5–65 m varies within the range of ∼40 to 70 cm. The polygonal structures of 2–6 m across correspond to the small-scale relief with the topography amplitude ranging from 20 to 30 cm and the standard deviation of about 3 cm. Within 1 km from the landing site, the variations of these characteristics are small. For the small polygons that are less than 5.5 m in size, the typical height is 10–15 cm. The polygons of 18–22 m in size are up to 28 cm in height, while the polygons of 60–90 m in size reach about 44 cm in height. The error in determining the relief heights was ±5.5%. The investigations showed that the improved photoclinometry method is promising for the study of small-scale features of the Martian surface.
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Original Russian Text © N.V. Bondarenko, I.A. Dulova, Yu.V. Kornienko, 2014, published in Astronomicheskii Vestnik, 2014, Vol. 48, No. 4, pp. 263–279.
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Bondarenko, N.V., Dulova, I.A. & Kornienko, Y.V. Topography of polygonal structures at the Phoenix landing site on mars through the relief retrieval from the HiRISE images with the improved photoclinometry method. Sol Syst Res 48, 243–258 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0038094614040030
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S0038094614040030