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Posted: 2015-09-25T07:42:31Z | Updated: 2015-09-25T07:42:31Z Is This Marshenge? Stonehenge-Like Formation Seen On Mars | HuffPost

Is This Marshenge? Stonehenge-Like Formation Seen On Mars

"Could the builders of Stonehenge have visited Mars... or is this just another face on Mars illusion?"

Seems like just about anything you can think of has been spotted on Mars: pyramids , floating spoons , lizards , crab monsters , even "a woman . Now, some people believe they've found a massive Stonehenge-like formation  sitting in the middle of a small hill on the Red Planet. 

Call it Marshenge. 

A video posted on YouTube (above) by Mister Enigma  takes a closer look at a NASA image found on the website for the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory  at the University of Arizona. 

Indeed, the raw NASA image shows a circular formation of stones or boulders atop a hill . It can be seen here, lower right of center:  

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NASA

"Could the builders of Stonehenge have visited Mars, and did they build the same thing there?" asks the narrator, who uses a computerized voice. "Or is this just another face on Mars illusion?"

Here it is even closer: 

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NASA

The scale of the image is not given, so while these could be Stonehenge-sized stones, they could also be much larger rocks. Either way, many "mysterious" objects seen from space at one angle look much less mysterious when viewed from other angles and with better resolution, such as the so-called "face" on Mars the narrator mentions. 

An image snapped by NASA's Viking 1 spacecraft  in 1976 revealed a formation that looked very much like a human face carved in stone:

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NASA

However, a more detailed image taken by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft in 2001 showed just another Martian hill: 

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NASA

Seeing familiar objects in unfamiliar places -- whether a Stonehenge formation on Mars or Jesus in a Cheeto  -- is a phenomenon called pareidolia. The BBC has an explanation of pareidolia here .

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