Mojave Crater, Mars

Within the Xanthe Terra region of Mars lies an impact crater known as Mojave (named after the town and desert in California!). The beautiful video below was put together by Seán Doran and shows a virtual flyover of Mojave Crater based on data from the HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). HiRISE has given us 12 years of incredible data, and the flyover video below is definitely a beautiful way to look at some of those data:

Sit back and let yourself be stunned by this awesome video of Mars imagery

Mars, dune-filled, desert planet. Mars has long held intrigue for many of us. From that red sprinkle of light in the night's sky, evoking gods of war, to the canal-irrigation hypotheses of Percival Lowell that led to some of the earliest alien science fiction, to the several dozen spacecraft that have been launched for Mars (with less than two dozen having been successful), Mars has a special place in the planetary hearts of many of us who are intrigued by the cosmos. 

One of the missions that has been uber successful, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), has the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (or HiRISE), which has taken well over 200,000 pictures of the Martian surface at high resolution. I just came across a sweet video compilation of false-colored images created by Kamil Bubeła that is definitely worth a watch. The video, called Vivid Mars, is stunning and enticing. I definitely felt the human imperative to get out there and explore a new place when I watched this video. Check it out below (or at Kamil's Youtube page):