India's Mars Orbiter Mission has now completed three years in orbit at Mars, and ISRO celebrated the anniversary by releasing the mission's second-year data to the public. Data from all instruments are available, but of course I am always most interested in cameras, and Mars Orbiter Mission has one: the Mars Colour Camera, MCC. MCC is a color camera with a detector 2048 pixels square, so it can take lovely photos of broad expanses of Mars suitable for printing.

I have spent a week downloading and examining the data. The website on which ISRO hosts the data is not very easy to use, so I have helped you out by downloading all the new images and posting them here along with metadata. (You may recall I did this a year ago, when ISRO issued the first year's worth of data.) Before you dive in to images, however, I encourage you to read on in order to learn a little more about what's in the data release.

I think I can safely say that the very best from the new data release is this full-globe view taken in northern Martian summer. It is the only non-truncated, full-globe view from the second year of the mission. Feast your eyes upon it. This camera produces such luscious color in a palette of ochre, sienna, and umber.