'Iridescent' clouds on Mars captured in Martian twilight in stunning NASA rover images

By Sharmila Kuthunur published 1 hour ago

"I'll always remember the first time I saw those iridescent clouds and was sure at first it was some color artifact."




Still frame of mars clouds captured from NASA rover showing iridescent colors and white plumes.
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/SSI)

What do clouds on Mars look like? Well, a new video stitched together from images captured by NASA's Curiosity rover offers a glimpse. In this video, delicate red-and-green-tinted clouds are seen drifting through the Martian sky in striking patterns that look similar to the ones Earth clouds make. Studying how and where on Mars these clouds form can help scientists better understand their impact on the planet's climate.

The images, which were captured on Jan. 17 by one of two cameras onboard Curiosity, feature "noctilucent" or twilight clouds — clouds captured wafting so high up in the Mars sky that they are illuminated by sunlight even when it is night on the planet's surface. The snapshots were collected over 16 minutes and sped up about 480 times to result in the video above, according to a statement by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which built Curiosity and leads the mission.

These twilight clouds, which are made of carbon dioxide ice — otherwise known as dry ice — can be seen at the top of the new images. They were floating about 37 to 50 miles (60 to 80 kilometers) above the surface, where it is cooler than at the surface and causes carbon dioxide in Mars' atmosphere to condense into clouds. Some of the ice crystals can be seen raining down on the surface as thick, white plumes before disappearing about 31 miles.

"I'll always remember the first time I saw those iridescent clouds and was sure at first it was some color artifact," Mark Lemmon, an atmospheric scientist at the Space Science Institute in Colorado, who led a paper summarizing Curiosity's first two seasons of twilight cloud observations, said in the statement. "Now it's become so predictable that we can plan our shots in advance; the clouds show up at exactly the same time of year."

More:
https://www.livescience.com/space/iridescent-clouds-on-mars-captured-in-martian-twilight-in-stunning-nasa-rover-images