Stunning visions of Mars

Humanity is now the proud owner of some 13,000 photos of Mars taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Monitoring Seasonal Albedo Patterns on South Polar Residual Cap (ESP_014405_0945)
Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

The photos were taken by the most powerful camera of any on NASA’s spacecraft – the aptly (if dryly) named High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE).  The HiRISE site not only lets you amble through the collection, but also offers wallpapers (for the particularly geeky amongst us) and gives some great detail about each photo, including exactly where (as hosted, amusingly, by Google Maps), and what the local time was…

Of course, for those not as interested in the thought of hours spent wandering the archives, have a look at Wired‘s ‘best of’ to see some of the strangest and most beautiful.

And, best of all, NASA wants to hear what you, the public, would like photographed next…