High Resolution Views of Mars

What do you get when you take a 20-inch (0.5-m) f/24 telescope with state-of-the-art digital detectors, put it in an orbit just 190 miles (300 km) above Mars, and let it click away for 4? years?

You get thousands of close-up images of the Red Planet that both brim with scientifically useful detail and look amazingly beautiful.

Truth be told, the primary camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter — the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE — has recorded so many astounding views that it's hard to single out the best ones. For example, the HiRISE team maintains a compendium of all captioned images to date, which as of mid-2010 totaled more than 900!

This carefully planned HiRISE snapshot shows NASA's Phoenix lander as it parachuted to the Martian surface in 2008. Click here for more information and to see a larger view.

NASA / JPL / Univ. of Arizona

Yet, for many planet-watchers, the potential of this camera's unprecedented imagery didn't register until October 2006, seven months after its arrival, when the camera peered down from orbit and snapped a view of Victoria crater that not only showed the rover Opportunity perched on the crenelated rim but also the tracks it 'd made to get there!…

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