The presence of so many gullies associated with the same layer in each mesa suggests that this layer is particularly effective in storing and conducting water. The MOC pictures were taken on January 22, 2000.
Sunlight illuminates each scene from the upper left.
To create the color versions seen here, we have taken much lower resolution red and blue images acquired by the MOC's wide angle cameras, and by the Viking Orbiter cameras in the 1970s, synthesized a green image by averaging red and blue, and created a pallete of colors that represent the range of colors on Mars. We then use a relationship that correlates color and brightness to assign a color to each gray level. This is only a crude approximation of martian color and should only be considered representative of Mars. It is likely Mars would not look like this to a human observer at Mars. Malin Space Science Systems and the California Institute of Technology built the MOC using spare hardware from the Mars Observer mission.