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What would you see if you could fly over Mars in a plane and look out the window?
It must be something like the thousands of curious, intriguing and spectacular images taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera mounted on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
The University of Arizona, Tucson, which operates HiRISE, has just released a new batch of these photos taken in the last several months.
They reveal an alien landscape of craters, valleys, ridges, channels, weird surface patterns and other features in incredible detail.
Take the stunning image on the above, which shows the muffin-cup-like Victoria Crater, a site once explored by the Mars rover Opportunity.
“The camera isn't looking straight down, but is pointed 22 degrees east so we get a better view of the crater's slopes, "comparable to a view from an airplane window," the university says.
Looking at some of the photos, you feel like you're flying over the Grand Canyon or the Sahara. Others are distinctly extraterrestrial in nature. In all cases, the images reveal lots of details about the surface of our neighbor in the solar system.
"Each full image from HiRISE covers a strip of Martian ground 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) wide, about two to four times that long, showing details as small as 1 meter, or yard, across," according to NASA's Web site.
It might be the closest thing to visiting Mars without leaving your chair.
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(Agencies)
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想象一下，如果你坐飛機穿越火星上空，能從窗外看到些什么？
那應該和美國宇航局火星偵察軌道器所攜帶的高清成像科學實驗儀所拍攝的照片差不多，這一科學儀器近日所拍攝的數千張照片呈現了火星表面奇特、迷人而又壯觀的景象。
土桑市亞利桑那大學近日發布了過去幾個月運用HiRISE所拍攝的一批最新火星表面照片。
這些照片十分清晰地呈現了外星球的景觀，其中包括火山口、山谷、山脊、河床、奇特的地表形態以及其他一些景象。
就拿上面那幅令人震撼的照片來說，它所呈現的是形狀像松餅杯一樣的維多利亞火山口，“機會號”火星探測器曾經探索過這里。
據亞利桑那大學介紹，“這架照相機機不是直接向下拍攝，而是向東轉了22度，這樣我們能更好地看到火山口的斜坡，“和從飛機窗口向外看差不多”。
看其中的一些圖片，你會覺得自己正在飛越大峽谷或撒哈拉沙漠。其他圖片則具有顯著的外星球特征。所有這些圖片都顯示了火星地表的很多細節。火星是地球在太陽系中的“鄰居”。
美國宇航局的網站稱：“高清晰成像科學實驗儀拍攝的每一張完整圖像所覆蓋的火星地表區域寬為6公里（合3.7英里），長約為寬的2到4倍，它呈現的細節可以小至一米或一碼的范圍。”
這可能是我們坐在家里能最近距離觀測火星的方式了。
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美“鳳凰”號探測器成功降落火星
火星上有神秘“女郎”？！
（英語點津陳丹妮 姍姍編輯）
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