PICTURES: Fascinating NASA images showcase Sands of Forvie on Mars
A NASA research scientist has revealed that the Sands of Forvie can now also be found on Mars – hundreds of millions of miles away from its original home in the Ellon area.
Aberdeenshire Council's Formartine area ranger David Brown's own curiosity was piqued when he saw an area of the Red Planet named after the beauty spot.
About six weeks ago he wrote a letter to NASA to ask how this had came to be.
He received an email from NASA research scientist Dr Abigail Fraeman this week who explained how this part of Mars was inspired by a corner of Aberdeenshire and provided fascinating images.
In her response Dr Fraeman said: "Thank you very much for your question, and it’s a delight to hear from someone with a connection to the real Forvie National Nature Reserve!
"Like all NASA missions to Mars, the Curiosity rover science team assigns informal names to the rocks and other geologic features we examined in order to help keep track of what is what.
"These names are not officially approved by the International Astronomical Union, but are very necessary for us because referring to 'this rock' and 'this rock' gets very confusing after looking at thousands of rocks!
"Each NASA Mars mission decides on their own unique convention for choosing feature names. For Curiosity, we divided our landing area into quadrants, and each quadrant is named after a region that contains famous geologic features on Earth.
"We use the quadrant name as the theme to choose target names.
"Curiosity is currently in the 'Torridon' quadrant, so all of the names we have been using are related to Scottish towns, lochs, and regions of geologic interest.
"We have a couple science team members on the team from the UK who have done fieldwork in Scotland – John Bridges from the University of Leicester and Sanjeev Gupta at Imperial College – and they have lead the effort to collect target names that fit this theme. (It's been great fun for me to learn more about Scottish places during the last few years!)
"One of the most striking features in the Torridon quadrant is a giant sheet of sand (1km wide), and 'Sands of Forvie' seemed like a very appropriate name for this feature to us.
"The 'Sands of Forvie' have been visible to Curiosity from many locations for months, and we had the opportunity to get up close and study this feature about a year ago."
She provided Mr Brown with images of what they saw processed by amateur image processors Paul Hammond and Damia Bouic.
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5 / 5Dr Fraeman added: "The sands here are black in colour because they are made from ground up bits of volcanic basalts, like the sands you’d see in Iceland.
"They are also coated in places in a thin layer of Martian dust. Studying features like this helps us understand modern sediment transport on Mars and better interpret Mars’ preserved sedimentary rock record."
Mr Brown is pleased with the attention it has brought to this area of Aberdeenshire.
He said: "I’m chuffed to bits that this has generated so much interest in our corner of Aberdeenshire.
"It was great to receive such a full and comprehensive reply and the wonderful photographs. The postcard is a beautiful image, I love the idea of a postcard ‘from Mars’.
"I would never have thought that there were British scientists working at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory who just happened to have done fieldwork in Scotland and who knew Forvie.
"You expect our National Nature Reserve to be famous in ornithological circles because of the bird life on the Ythan Estuary, it clearly is of interest to geologists too.
"I hope the attention the post created will draw even more people to visit this beautiful area of Aberdeenshire."
Images from Curosity can be viewed online at https://db-prods.net/marsroversimages/curiosity-2020.php#10
