NASA shares stunning image of beautiful blue dunes on Mars

American Space Agency NASA on Thursday (April 8) released a breathtaking photo of the blue dunes on Mars.

A sea of dark dunes, sculpted by the wind into long lines, surrounds Mars' northern polar cap, NASA said.

The image shared by NASA covers an area of 30 Km, however, the area is as big as the state of Texas in US. 

The photo of the dunes is false colour image which means that the colours are representative of temperatures.

Areas with cooler temperatures are recorded in bluer tints, while warmer features are depicted in yellows and oranges. Due to this reason, the dark, sun warmed dunes glow with a beautiful golden colour. 

The photo is a part of a special set of images captured by the Thermal Emission Imaging System instrument on the Mars Odyssey orbiter, NASA wrote in a statement.

Captured during the the period from December 2002 to November 2004, the stunning images have been released to mark the 20th anniversary of Odyssey, which was the longest-working spacecraft in history.

As per space agency, the pictured location on Mars is 80.3 degrees north latitude, 172.1 degrees east longitude.

The Mars Odyssey orbiter is a robotic spacecraft circling the Red Planet and was launched in 2001. It uses a thermal imager to find out what the planet is made of, detect water and shallow buried ice and study the radiation environment.