As Christmas approaches, even Mars seems to be getting into the Christmas spirit.
The European Space Agency’s Mars Express has seen two seasonal silhouettes on the surface of the red planet.
The pointed wings of an angel figure, filled with hello, can be seen sweeping up and off the top of the frame in an image taken with the high-resolution stereo camera on the spacecraft orbiting Mars.
Just next to the figure of the angels is a big heart.
The shapes appear to jump out of a tan-colored surface on Mars.
Their dark color is due to the composition of the dune fields which are made up of sand rich in dark, rocky minerals also found on Earth.
This festive view is found in the southern polar region of Mars, with the pole itself positioned just out of the frame on the right.
The south pole is usually covered by a 1.5 km thick ice cap about 400km across and measuring 1.6 million cubic kilometers, just over 12% of that is water ice.
But as the southern hemisphere of Mars experiences its current summer, the image shows the planet’s polar ice stores at the lowest annual levels.
The angel and heart qualities are both made up of different features.
The angel’s hand is thought to be a large sublimation pit, seen as if it were reaching to the left – a feature that ice turns to gas and leaves empty pockets and depressions in the surface of the planet.
At the same time, a crack of influence makes up the head and halo of the angel. It was apparently formed when a body from space collided with the crust of Mars.
The heart is covered with a steep line of cliffs or steep slopes formed by erosion processes, and separated from a dark expanse below.
The origin of this dark material, found all over Mars, is unclear, but scientists believe it was once deeper beneath the surface in layers of material created by ancient volcanic activity.
Although this material was first buried, it is brought to the surface by continuous impacts and erosion and then spread more widely across the planet by Martian winds.