00:49 Martian Mystery: Massive Plume Nobody Can Explain An incredible sight occurred at the Southern hemisphere of Mars. Researchers are still trying to determine what this phenomena was. Matt Sampson has the details.

A mysterious Martian haze is defying everything scientists know about the Red Planet's atmosphere.

The strange phenomenon was spotted in March and April of 2012 over 155 miles above the planet's surface , according to a recently published report in the journal Nature.

Wayne Jaeschke, member of the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers and a Westchester, Pennsylvania, patent attorney, was the first to capture the anomaly , "I sent a couple of frames to some guys I know in Australia," he told National Geographic, "and asked, 'Am I seeing things?'"

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What Jaeschke thought was a camera sensor error turned out to be something very strange.

Agustin Sanchez-Lavega, the previously-mentioned study's lead author and professor of physics at Universidad del País Vasco in Spain, told the European Space Agency (ESA), "At about 250 kilometers (155 miles), the division between the atmosphere and outer space is very thin, so the reported plumes are extremely unexpected ."

An additional plume was captured by the Hubble Telescope in 1997, the ESA said. Scientists are using these images and data, as well as amateur photos of the 2012 plumes, to further dive into what the anomalies are caused by.

The plumes are larger than any observed before, and researchers concluded the anomaly may be a reflective cloud of water-ice or a bright aurora, the ESA reported.

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So why is this puzzling? Researchers are unsure how either phenomenon was able to materialize in such thin parts of the planet's atmosphere.

"Both explanations defy our current understanding of Mars' upper atmosphere," the report's abstract reads.

The European Space Agency's Exo-Mars Trace Gas Orbiter, set to launch in 2016, may offer researchers hope and better insight when it arrives at Mars.

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