Off world technology

Right up front I have to say this isn't a photograph I took. Boy, I'd be really happy to create something with such interesting light and shadow! But even if I was technically adept enough and creative enough, this image would still be out of my reach. It shows a sand dune field in Rabe Crater, located in the southern highlands of Mars. The image was produced by NASA and is part of the HIRISE, the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, a project by the University of Arizona, Department of Planetary Science, Lunar and Planetory Laboratory. My current assignment is to look at some technology sites on the Web. I was led to the HIRISE site by an article in Slashshot: News for Nerds

HIRISE offers downloadable high resolution photographs of amazing images from space. The image above is a portion of a larger image taken of sand dunes in Rabe Crater. I find it interesting, aesthetically, because the larger image was taken simply to gather information for scientific inquiry into the nature of the surface of Mars, but I suspect that whoever cropped the larger image chose this particular crop not only because of the information it conveyed, but also because it was pleasing to the eye.