With its arid deserts and soft, red earth, Edinburgh’s unmistakeable features are instantly recognisable - even if they are to be found 140 million miles away.
NASA has released the latest images of a section of Mars named after the Capital, offering the opportunity to see how the city compares with its distant cousin.
Captured by the mast camera mounted on the US space agency’s Curiosity rover, the images show the peak of ‘Mount Sharp’ - the Martian equivalent of Arthur’s Seat - in the background of the cracked rust-coloured surface.
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The space agency decided on the names in tribute to the historical figure James Hutton, the Edinburgh scientist regarded as the ‘father of modern geology’.
Areas named ‘Holyrood’, ‘Muck’ and ‘Sandwick’ have also been explored, while a second hole drilled nearby was named ‘Glasgow’ in 2020.
They all form the ‘Torridon’ area of the planet - so named for its reddish similarity to the ancient Torridonian supergroup of rocks in the North West Highlands.
These images were captured in March of that year - Mars Sols 2,711 and 2,712 - but have only now been released having gone through a special rendering operation.
The space agency said the colour balance of the scene had been processed to reflect “the way it would look to the human eye under daytime lighting on Earth,” without Mars’ carbon dioxide-heavy atmosphere obscuring the view.
Experts added: "The scene was captured while Curiosity was parked on top of a feature called the 'Greenheugh Pediment.'
"Looming above in the background is the top of Mount Sharp, the three-mile-tall mountain that Curiosity has been ascending since 2014."
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It is hoped tiny fragments picked up around the Edinburgh area can be analysed by Curiosity’s on-board technology to help researchers discover if water was ever present on the planet’s surface.
Mars orbits the sun in 687 days, occasionally passing within 40 million miles of Earth.
It will next make a ‘close approach’ in December 22, when it will come a mere 38.2 million miles from the planet's surface.
