Image courtesy of NASA/JPL/University of Arizona. It’s part of their project called HiRISE in which they’re taking photographs of Mars. High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment. I suppose they could also have gone with “HiRISEx” as an acronym, but it’s just as well they didn’t.
Noctis Labyrinthus – the Mazes of Night – is a system of rifts or ditches called grabens that lie between the volcano-torn Mariner’s Valleys and the Tharsis Plateau. From this perspective, it looks like the scales of a colossal sleeping reptile.
I bet the skiing’s really great there.
Not that I’m trying to imply those white deposits are snow – they’re supposedly likely to be clay or sulfates or something. (I’m no geologist – don’t ask me.) It’s just a way to put the thing in a human scale.