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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，如果你坐飞机穿越火星上空，能从窗外看到些什么？
那应该和美国宇航局火星侦察轨道器所携带的高清成像科学实验仪所拍摄的照片差不多，这一科学仪器近日所拍摄的数千张照片呈现了火星表面奇特、迷人而又壮观的景象。
土桑市亚利桑那大学近日发布了过去几个月运用HiRISE所拍摄的一批最新火星表面照片。
这些照片十分清晰地呈现了外星球的景观，其中包括火山口、山谷、山脊、河床、奇特的地表形态以及其他一些景象。
就拿上面那幅令人震撼的照片来说，它所呈现的是形状像松饼杯一样的维多利亚火山口，“机会号”火星探测器曾经探索过这里。
据亚利桑那大学介绍，“这架照相机机不是直接向下拍摄，而是向东转了22度，这样我们能更好地看到火山口的斜坡，“和从飞机窗口向外看差不多”。
看其中的一些图片，你会觉得自己正在飞越大峡谷或撒哈拉沙漠。其他图片则具有显著的外星球特征。所有这些图片都显示了火星地表的很多细节。火星是地球在太阳系中的“邻居”。
美国宇航局的网站称：“高清晰成像科学实验仪拍摄的每一张完整图像所覆盖的火星地表区域宽为6公里（合3.7英里），长约为宽的2到4倍，它呈现的细节可以小至一米或一码的范围。”
这可能是我们坐在家里能最近距离观测火星的方式了。
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（英语点津陈丹妮 姗姗编辑）
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