The Candor Tetrahedron
The latest of the fascinating Martian illusions to arrive is a structure first spotted in 2002 that resembles a three-sided pyramid perched in a wind-carved valley called Candor Chasma.
This structure gained prominence last week, after being shared on X by the director Brian Cory Dobbs.
The post spread quickly, with cropped images of the formation circulating on social media.
The images themselves are real NASA data from orbiters that first photographed the region in 2001.
On Mars, there is a three-sided pyramid the size of the Great Pyramid in Egypt.
Discovered by Keith Laney.
— Brian Cory Dobbs (@BrianCoryDobbs)
The earliest documented identification of the pyramid-like structure dates back to 2002when the independent investigator Wilmer Faust highlighted a strange feature he observed in a Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) image, E06-00269.
The structure was called Candor tetrahedron.
Since its discovery, other orbiters have also captured images of the region, notably the HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
HiRISE’s high-resolution images are stunning — but when you zoom out and look at the landscape around the tetrahedron, it starts to look less strange and more like what it really is: a slightly irregular mountain carved by the same forces of erosion that shaped the canyons around it.
As explained by , Candor Chasma is one of the largest canyons on Mars, shaped by water, landslides, wind and perhaps even tectonic activity over billions of years.
The region is also dotted with geological formations that scientists have called “positive relief protrusions” – previously buried rock structures that are stronger than the bedrock that once surrounded them. After erosion removed the surrounding bedrock, the protuberances were left standing.
These protuberances are not small: they can measure up to a kilometer in diameter and up to tens of meters in height.
O Candor tetrahedron is about 290 meters in diameter and is slightly taller than the typical bulge, with a height of 145 meters.
Also not unlike natural pyramids on Earth: For example, a mountain called Cerro Tusa in Colombia rises 457 meters above the surrounding terrain, with a base of 1.8 kilometers. The Chinese province of Guizhou is famous for its pyramid-shaped mountains.
If we look closely at the image of the pyramid, you can see that it stands on a wind ripple field — rippling ridges carved by Mars’ wild winds, suggesting continuous erosion.
Mars is, indeed, incredible. Its geology and climate have produced landscapes that are at once surprisingly familiar and completely different from anything we can see on Earth.
