If it’s quiet solitude and beauty you seek, there is no better place than the surface of Mars.

Mars has earned its moniker as the Red Planet, but the HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) transforms subtle differences in Martian soils into a vivid rainbow of colours. What may look uniform to the naked eye becomes a landscape of variations—reds, browns, blues, ochres—once you look closely.

For more than a decade, HiRISE has captured not only gorgeous but scientifically invaluable images of Mars. These photos do more than just please the eyes; they enable researchers to study terrain, geology, and change with exquisite resolution.

Its photographs are so detailed that scientists can examine Martian features at the scale of just a few feet. This allows detection of small changes—silt flows, new scars, collapse pits—and even the site of the recent crash of Europe’s Schiaparelli Mars lander has been clearly identified, with debris visible against the rust-coloured landscape.

We combed through 2,054 new images from HiRISE, released in August, September, and October, to bring you some of the very best. These scenes may help you momentarily escape Earth and drift into Mars’s breathtaking and remote vistas.

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• A large chasm: Deep fissures cut into the Martian surface, their sharp walls shadowed and dramatic.

• Dark, rust‑coloured dunes in Russell Crater: Wind‑sculpted dunes that shift with seasons, their hues echoing iron‑rich dust.

• Possible future landing ground for Mars 2020 mission: A site under consideration, chosen for its geology, safety, and scientific promise.

• The crash‑site of Schiaparelli: The black splotch marks the exact impact point. Nearby, small white fragments—parts of the lander—dot the terrain.

• Oval mineral deposits speckling a dune field: Resembling zebra stripes or pebble clusters, these mineral stains offer clues to ground composition and past water action.

• False‑colour image making dunes and gullies look blue: Colour enhancement reveals subtle topography and highlights shapes and slopes not obvious in true colour.

• Candidate landing site for ESA’s ExoMars 2020: A region evaluated for its rock types, potential for past life, and ease of rover operation.

• “Kolhar” dune field near the North Pole: Named after a fictional world, its ridged dunes stretch under polar light.

• Strange shapes at Mars’s south pole carved by carbon dioxide sublimation: When dry CO₂ transitions between solid and gas, it erodes the surface, forming pits, ridges, and channels.

• A recent impact crater: Fresh geological scars tell stories of meteor strikes, ejecta fields, and immediate terrain alterations.

• “Spiders” – dust eruptions from warming and cooling surface: These branching features appear each season, as sunlight triggers sublimation, dust flows, and venting beneath translucent ice.

• Layered sediments in Cerberus Palus: Strata of rock and soil, stacked over millennia, capturing Mars’s climatic history.

• Gullies that may show small landslides and seasonal melt: In warmer sunlight, traces of dark material suggest possible moisture or briny flows.

• Glacial terrain with an iridescent sheen: Ice‑rich regions reflect light oddly, hinting at subsurface ices or frost layers.

• Steep slope in Eastern Noctis Labyrinthus: Rugged cliffs and labyrinthine valleys that challenge any would‑be lander.

• Dunes in a crater, with processing artefacts: Red and green bars in some images are not Martian features but side effects of image stitching and calibration.

• Wind‑shaped dunes crawling across cracked soil in Nili Patera: A dynamic interplay of wind, sand, and underlying dry mud cracks.

• Same dunes in full colour months later: Changes in lighting and atmospheric dust reveal shifts in hue and contrast.

• “Fans” around dunes showing seasonality: Deposits radiating from dune bases indicate wind directions and possibly melting or frost cycles.

• Regions near the equator, like Ceraunius Fossae: Large fractures, lava flows, and volcanic features dominate.

• Textures in North Sinus Meridiani: Layered buttes and ridges create patterns like brush strokes across the landscape.

• False‑colours in Syria Planum: inky blue speckled with gold: Mineral mapping assigns unusual hues so scientists can distinguish rock types.

• Arcadia Planitia crater fields: Flat expanses punctuated by craters, offering contrast between smooth plains and rough edgelands.

• Layers in West Arabia buttes: Exposed bedding planes tell of sedimentation, erosion, perhaps ancient floods.

• Utopia Planitia plain vistas: Sweeping lowlands, some flooded long ago, now cracked, pitted, bearing wind‑blown sand.

• Mineral speckles in Galle Crater: Bright deposits stand out against dark backgrounds—perhaps salts, ice deposits, or oxidized minerals.

• Blowing sand eating away old crater rims: Wind erosion softens sharp edges, filling in depressions.

• Two‑toned Mars: Regions split by colour—darker volcanic soil next to lighter dust—making Mars a patchwork planet.

• Seasonal dunes called “Buzzel”: Shifting sands that form, recede, and reshape with the seasons.

• “River delta”‑like ridges in Nepenthes Mensae: Terrain that suggests water once flowed, splitting, depositing sediments, then stopping.

• Edges of debris apron: Where cliffs have degraded, and rock debris slides or collapses form slopes of rubble.

• Alluvial fans as evidence of ancient water flows: Sloping layered fans where sediments once were carried by flowing water.

• Exposed bedrock in Capri Chasma: Possibly once carved by catastrophic floods.

• Layered deposits at the south pole: False‑colour imagery makes bright bands look like ice; some are rock and sediment layers reflecting ancient climate cycles.

• Shadow of Ganges Chasma looms tall: Deep canyons cast long shadows in low light, emphasizing vertical relief.

• Eos Chasma in Valles Marineris: Part of the largest canyon system on Mars; dramatic cliffs, broken terrain, signs of tectonics and erosion.

• Pedestal crater where crater rims erode differently based on rock hardness: The crater floor and rim show differential erosion—harder layers resist wearing away.

• Mars defrosting: Seasonal removal of frost or dry ice reveals darker underlying soil, changes in albedo (reflectivity).

• Basin floors: Massive depressions, some volcanic in origin, others impact basins slowly filling with dust.

• Ancient, contorted landscapes as landing candidates: Rugged, folded terrain offer science potential but pose engineering challenges.

• “Spider terrain” more curious shapes: Symmetric radial patterns around pits made by CO₂ sublimation.

• Crater near Aonia Terra resembling the Death Star: A dramatic basin whose shape and shadows invoke images of science fiction.

• Fractures in the floor of Upper Morava Valles: Cracks aligned, cutting across plains, perhaps faults or tectonic features.

• Mawrth Vallis, an ancient site eyed by NASA for Mars 2020 rover: Rich in phyllosilicates (clay minerals) suggesting long‑ago water interaction; high science value.

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Mars is not merely a barren rock; it is a vivid archive of time, wind, ice, and impact. Each dune, each crater, each faded layer whispers stories of climate shifts, of water’s existence long ago, of winds that never rest. We may never walk there soon (though missions draw closer every year), but through HiRISE, we can travel in the mind, gazing from orbit, and marvel at a planet both alien and strangely familiar.