<< Back to Index		Utopian Sun The Viking 2 robotic laboratory snapped this sunrise photograph in 1978 from its landing site on Mars' Utopia Planitia (the Utopian Plain), a vast flatland littered with rocks. The red planet appears quite dark in dawn and dusk pictures, except for the intense sky glow above the sun, a peculiar effect produced as tiny particles of dust and ice scatter sunlight in the atmosphere. Mars Ice A portion of the south polar cap persists during the martian summer. Each season the residual reservoir of frozen carbon dioxide erodes into a picturesque array of pits, valleys, buttes and mesas. Observations by the Mars Global Surveyor suggest that the scarps have retreated about 3 meters each martian year. Bumpy Mars This three-dimensional depiction of Mars reveals magnetized areas of the crust, or mini-magnetospheres that stretch hundreds of miles from the surface. The magnetic globules, remnants of the planet's once mighty internal magnetic field, could someday help shield human explorers from the sun's destructive rays, theorizes Mars scientist David A. Brain.