( CNN ) -- What would you see if you could fly over Mars in a plane and look out the window ? Victoria Crater as seen by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter . The crater is about half a mile in diameter . It must be something like the thousands of curious , intriguing and spectacular images taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment ( HiRISE ) camera mounted on NASA 's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter . The University of Arizona , Tucson , which operates HiRISE , has just released a new batch of these photos taken in the last several months . You can check out the full set here . They reveal an alien landscape of craters , valleys , ridges , channels , weird surface patterns and other features in incredible detail . Take the stunning image on the left , which shows the muffin-cup-like Victoria Crater , a site once explored by the Mars rover Opportunity . The camera is n't looking straight down , but is pointed 22 degrees east so we get a better view of the crater 's slopes , `` comparable to a view from an airplane window , '' the university says . Looking at some of the photos , you feel like you 're flying over the Grand Canyon or the Sahara . Others are distinctly extraterrestrial in nature . In all cases , the images reveal lots of details about the surface of our neighbor in the solar system . `` Each full image from HiRISE covers a strip of Martian ground 6 kilometers ( 3.7 miles ) wide , about two to four times that long , showing details as small as 1 meter , or yard , across , '' according to NASA 's Web site . It might be the closest thing to visiting Mars without leaving your chair .
Photos were taken by a camera mounted on NASA 's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter . The image was released as part of the agency's ongoing campaign to promote public awareness about Mars. A new batch of these photos taken in the last several months has just been released .