Watch martian clouds scoot, thanks to NASA’s Curiosity – Phys.Org

August 10, 2017 by Guy Webster Clouds drift across the sky above a Martian horizon in this accelerated sequence of enhanced images taken on July 17, 2017, by the Navcam on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/York University

Wispy, early-season clouds resembling Earth's ice-crystal cirrus clouds move across the Martian sky in some new image sequences from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover.

These clouds are the most clearly visible so far from Curiosity, which landed five years ago this month about five degrees south of Mars' equator. Clouds moving in the Martian sky have been observed previously by Curiosity and other missions on the surface of Mars, including NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander in the Martian arctic nine years ago.

Researchers used Curiosity's Navigation Camera (Navcam) to take two sets of eight images of the sky on an early Martian morning last month. For one set, the camera pointed nearly straight up. For the other, it pointed just above the southern horizon. Cloud movement was recorded in both and was made easier to see by image enhancement. A midday look at the sky with the same camera the same day showed no clouds.

Mars' elliptical orbit makes that planet's distance from the Sun vary more than Earth's does. In previous Martian years, a belt of clouds has appeared near the equator around the time Mars was at its farthest from the Sun. The new images of clouds were taken about two months before that farthest point in the orbit, relatively early in the season for the appearance of this cloud belt.

"It is likely that the clouds are composed of crystals of water ice that condense out onto dust grains where it is cold in the atmosphere," said Curiosity science-team member John Moores of York University, Toronto, Canada. "The wisps are created as those crystals fall and evaporate in patterns known as 'fall streaks' or 'mare's tails.' While the rover does not have a way to ascertain the altitude of these clouds, on Earth such clouds form at high altitude."

York's Charissa Campbell produced the enhanced-image sequences by generating an "average" of all the frames in each sequence, then subtracting that average from each frame, emphasizing any frame-to-frame changes. The moving clouds are also visible, though fainter, in a sequence of raw images.

Explore further: Curiosity captures gravity wave shaped clouds on Mars

More information: For more about Curiosity, visit mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl

This week, from March 20th to 24th, the 48th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference will be taking place in The Woodlands, Texas. Every year, this conference brings together international specialists in the fields of geology, ...

Using the most powerful telescope ever sent to Mars, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter caught a view of the Curiosity rover this month amid rocky mountainside terrain.

Many features on the surface of Mars hint at the presence of liquid water in the past. These range from the Valles Marineris, a 4,000 km long and 7 km deep system of canyons, to the tiny hematite spherules called "blueberries". ...

The left side of this 360-degree panorama from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the long rows of ripples on a linear shaped dune in the Bagnold Dune Field on the northwestern flank of Mount Sharp.

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover began close-up investigation of a target called "Marimba," on lower Mount Sharp, during the week preceding the fourth anniversary of the mission's dramatic sky-crane landing.

Curiosity celebrated two years on Mars on August 5, 2014, and is continuing its progress across the surface of the planet. The rover has already fulfilled one of its primary mission goals by confirming that environments theoretically ...

An asteroid the size of a house will shave past Earth at a distance of some 44,000 kilometres (27,300 miles) in October, inside the Moon's orbit, astronomers said Thursday.

(Phys.org)An international team of astronomers has discovered a Jupiter-mass alien world circling a giant star known as HD 208897. The newly detected exoplanet was found as a result of high-precision radial velocity measurements. ...

NASA's Cassini spacecraft will enter new territory in its final mission phase, the Grand Finale, as it prepares to embark on a set of ultra-close passes through Saturn's upper atmosphere with its final five orbits around ...

A bright Moon will outshine the annual Perseids meteor shower, which will peak Saturday with only a fifth the usual number of shooting stars visible to Earthlings, astronomers say.

Scientists have discovered why heavyweight galaxies living in a dense crowd of galaxies tend to spin more slowly than their lighter neighbours.

New evidence from ancient lunar rocks suggests that an active dynamo once churned within the molten metallic core of the moon, generating a magnetic field that lasted at least 1 billion years longer than previously thought. ...

Please sign in to add a comment. Registration is free, and takes less than a minute. Read more

View post:

Watch martian clouds scoot, thanks to NASA's Curiosity - Phys.Org

Related Posts

Comments are closed.