Arsinoes Chaos
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Arsinoes Chaos is a
chaos terrain In astrogeology, chaos terrain, or chaotic terrain, is a planetary surface area where features such as ridges, cracks, and plains appear jumbled and enmeshed with one another. Chaos terrain is a notable feature of the planets Mars and Mercury, Ju ...
in the Margaritifer Sinus quadrangle on Mars. It is 200 km in diameter. Its location is 7.66 °S and 27.9 °W. Arsinoes Chaos was named after Arsinoe, a queen of ancient Egypt, daughter of Ptolemy and Berenice. Chaos terrain on Mars is distinctive; nothing on Earth compares to it. Chaos terrain generally consists of irregular groups of large blocks, some tens of kilometres across and a hundred or more meters high. The tilted and flat topped blocks form depressions hundreds of metres deep. A chaotic region can be recognized by a rat's nest of mesas, buttes, and hills, chopped through with valleys which in places look almost patterned. Some parts of this chaotic area have not collapsed completely—they are still formed into large mesas, so they may still contain water ice. Some buttes and mesas in Arsinoes display layering. Many places on Mars show rocks arranged in layers. Rock can form layers in a variety of ways. Volcanoes, wind, or water can produce layers. Layers can be hardened by the action of groundwater. Martian ground water probably moved hundreds of kilometers, and in the process it dissolved many minerals from the rock it passed through. When ground water surfaces in low areas containing sediments, water evaporates in the thin atmosphere and leaves behind minerals as deposits and/or cementing agents. Consequently, layers of dust could not later easily erode away since they were cemented together. On Earth, mineral-rich waters often evaporate forming large deposits of various types of
salts In chemistry, a salt is a chemical compound consisting of an ionic assembly of positively charged cations and negatively charged anions, which results in a compound with no net electric charge. A common example is table salt, with positively c ...
and other
mineral In geology and mineralogy, a mineral or mineral species is, broadly speaking, a solid chemical compound with a fairly well-defined chemical composition and a specific crystal structure that occurs naturally in pure form.John P. Rafferty, ed. (2 ...
s. A detailed discussion of layering with many Martian examples can be found in Sedimentary Geology of Mars.Grotzinger, J. and R. Milliken (eds.). 2012. Sedimentary Geology of Mars. SEPM.


Gallery

Mapbeer.jpg, Map showing Arsinoes Chaos (far left) and other nearby features Wikiarsinoeschaosboundary.jpg, Boundaries of Arsinoes Chaos represented by dark green in the center. Image:26996layeredwhitebuttes.jpg, Butte in Arsinoes Chaos with some light-toned layers, as seen by HiRISE under
HiWish HiWish is a program created by NASA so that anyone can suggest a place for the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to photograph. It was started in January 2010. In the first few months of the program 3000 people signed up to use HiRIS ...
program. Wikiarsinoesfanswide.jpg, Light-toned deposit in Arsinoes Chaos, as seen by CTX camera (on
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter ''Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter'' (MRO) is a spacecraft designed to study the geology and climate of Mars, provide reconnaissance of future landing sites, and relay data from surface missions back to Earth. It was launched on August 12, 2005, an ...
). WikiESP 039352 1730lighttoneddeposit.jpg, Light-toned deposit in Arsinoes Chaos, as seen by
HiRISE High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment is a camera on board the '' Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter'' which has been orbiting and studying Mars since 2006. The 65 kg (143 lb), US$40 million instrument was built under the direction ...
under HiWish program. Note: this field can be found in the previous wide image of Arsinoes Chaos, as seen by CTX camera (on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter). WikiESP 039563 1730yardangs.jpg,
Yardang A yardang is a streamlined protuberance carved from bedrock or any consolidated or semiconsolidated material by the dual action of wind abrasion by dust and sand and deflation (the removal of loose material by wind turbulence.) Yardangs become e ...
s formed in light-toned material and surrounded by dark, volcanic basalt sand, as seen by HiRISE under HiWish program. WikiESP 039563 1730yardangsclose.jpg, Close-up image of yardangs, as seen by HiRISE under HiWish program. Arrows point to
transverse aeolian ridges Transverse aeolian ridges (TARs) are visually bright features commonly found in topographic depressions on Mars. These small-scale and relict bedforms were first seen in narrow-angle images from the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) and were called “ridg ...
, TAR's, a type of dune. Note this is an enlargement of the previous image from HiRISE.


References

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See also

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List of areas of chaos terrain on Mars This is a list of areas of chaos terrain officially named by the International Astronomical Union on the planet Mars. Chaos terrain (or chaotic terrain) is an astrogeological term used to denote planetary surface areas where features such as ridg ...
Chaotic terrains on Mars Margaritifer Sinus quadrangle