NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover has managed to capture “shining” clouds on Mars. These clouds had arrived earlier and formed higher than expected in the atmosphere on the Red Planet, which is usually thin, dry, and having rare cloudy days, NASA stated.
The NASA scientists noted that these clouds are typically found at the planet’s equator at the coldest time of year, when Mars is the farthest from the Sun in its oval-shaped orbit. However, the scientists now noticed clouds forming over NASA’s Curiosity rover earlier than expected –one full Martian year ago — which is equivalent to two Earth years.
In late January, this year, the team started documenting these “early” clouds with images displaying wispy puffs filled with ice crystals that scattered light from the setting Sun, including some of it shimmering with colour.
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The rover’s Mast Camera, or Mastcam, clicked colour images of the iridescent, “mother of pearl” clouds on March 5, 2021, which is the 3,048th Martian day — or sol — of the mission.
“If you see a cloud with a shimmery pastel set of colors in it, that’s because the cloud particles are all nearly identical in size and is usually happening just after the clouds have formed and have all grown at the same rate,” said Mark Lemmon, an atmospheric scientist with the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
Noting that these clouds are among the most colorful things on the Red Planet, Lemmon said that anyone skygazing next to Curiosity could see the faint colours with the naked eye. “I always marvel at the colours that show up: reds and greens and blues and purples. It’s really cool to see something shining with lots of colour on Mars,” he said.
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On March 31, the 3,075th sol or Martian day of the mission, the navigation cameras on the mast of Curiosity also captured black-and-white images highlighting rippling structures of the clouds, just after sunset.
“Viewed just after sunset, their ice crystals catch the fading light while causing them to appear to glow against the darkening sky. These twilight clouds, also known as “noctilucent” (Latin for “night shining”) clouds, grow brighter as they fill with crystals, then darken after the Sun’s position in the sky drops below their altitude,” NASA stated, while adding that besides being spectacular displays, such images helped scientists understand how clouds form on Mars and why these recent ones are different.
