[[Mod. note -- excess whitespace trimmed -- jt]]

Hi, you experts! ;-)

I stumbled over this Mars Global Surveyor photo,
url: http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/m07_m12/images/M09/M0902042.html
"MOC narrow-angle image M09-02042", which covers an approx 2.8 km wide and
171.3 km high strip if I understand it correctly.

I have copied the photo he
url: http://home.no.net/dubjai/misc/moc/M0902042.jpg [ca. 836 kiB]
This is, as I understand it, near the south pole of Mars.

At the very bottom there are some features which to my untrained eye look
very much like lakes, which I have cropped out of the main photo and
placed here (just 19 kiB):
A: url: http://home.no.net/dubjai/misc/moc/nederste_av_M0902042.jpg
I wonder what this is -- I received no reply at all when mailing the
public "astronomy question" address at the University of Oslo.

Also, but less interesting, I wonder if the features that look like ice
roses (hundreds of meters wide), e.g. at the very top of that photo,
B: url: http://home.no.net/dubjai/misc/moc/oeverste_av_M0902042.jpg.
are formations due to freezing and thawing, or something else?

Also -- this is one heck of feature-rich photo! ;-) -- I wonder about
the seemingly rectangular kilometer-wide depression or crater (whatever)
in the middle of the picture,
C: url: http://home.no.net/dubjai/misc/moc/midterste_av_M0902042.jpg

But, first and foremost, does anyone know about the looks-like-lakes at the
bottom, in (A)? In addition to those at the very bottom there's a smaller one
a little bit upward from the bottom. The smooth gray-color gradients in the
interiors of the features might be shadow, but it doesn't look that way.

TIA.,

- Alf