It's expensive to go to Mars. They are there to do science, not take pictures. Sometimes Mars is captured with some science mixed in.
That is the case with this picture of star dunes captured by the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Most regions on Mars have winds blowing in a certain direction. It is the same here on Earth. Most dunes are oriented to the wind direction. There are twohorns on the Barchan dunes and they are one of the most common types of dunes.
The star dunes are not the same. They form when winds shift direction. On Earth, only 8.5% of the dunes are star dunes.
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has an instrument called HiRISE. There are a lot of HiRISE images on Universe Today. When it captured this image in 2010, HiRISE wasn't looking for star dunes. It was looking at the geologic aspects of possible clays detected with the MRO's CRISM instrument.
Mars has a lot of geologic diversity on display.
There are more star dunes on Mars than there are on Earth. The wind comes from many directions before it reaches the sand inside the dune. The sand is shaped into a beautiful pattern by all that activity.
The star dunes in the crater in the Tyrrhena Terra are just a small part of the entire HiRISE image. The whole image can be seen here. Check it out.
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