“That’s usually happening just after the clouds have formed and have all grown at the same rate. Monday, JanuNASA/JPL/University of Arizona A Prime Meridian for Mars This dune-filled crater, called Airy-0 (zero), defines 0 longitude for the Red Planet, much like the location of the Royal Observatory Greenwich in England does on Earth. “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,” said Mark Lemmon, an atmospheric scientist with the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado. This is just one useful clue scientists use to determine how high they are.Įven more stunning are iridescent, or “mother of pearl” clouds. 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. Viewed just after sunset, their ice crystals catch the fading light, causing them to appear to glow against the darkening sky. But it’s the color images from the rover’s Mast Camera, or Mastcam, that really shine – literally. The image is made up of 21 individual images stitched together and color corrected so that the scene appears as it would to the human eye. The fine, rippling structures of these clouds are easier to see with images from Curiosity’s black-and-white navigation cameras. NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured these clouds just after sunset on March 19, 2021, the 3,063rd Martian day, or sol, of the rover’s mission. Scientists look for subtle clues to establish a cloud’s altitude, and it will take more analysis to say for sure which of Curiosity’s recent images show water-ice clouds and which show dry-ice ones. But the clouds Curiosity has imaged are at a higher altitude, where it’s very cold, indicating that they are likely made of frozen carbon dioxide, or dry ice. Most Martian clouds hover no more than about 37 miles (60 kilometers) in the sky and are composed of water ice. In fact, Curiosity’s team has already made one new discovery: The early-arrival clouds are actually at higher altitudes than is typical. More than just spectacular displays, such images help scientists understand how clouds form on Mars and why these recent ones are different. What resulted are images of wispy puffs filled with ice crystals that scattered light from the setting Sun, some of them shimmering with color. But look more closely, and youll see a few. This year, they were ready to start documenting these “early” clouds from the moment they first appeared in late January. NASAs Ingenuity Mars Helicopter recently snapped an expansive photo of the Red Planet, looking almost Earth-like in all its rugged splendor.
#Nasa picture of the day mars full#
But one full Martian year ago – two Earth years – scientists noticed clouds forming over NASA’s Curiosity rover earlier than expected. Clouds are typically found at the planet’s equator in the coldest time of year, when Mars is the farthest from the Sun in its oval-shaped orbit. Cloudy days are rare in the thin, dry atmosphere of Mars.
0 kommentar(er)
