Martian weather between 4 June 2018 and 10 June 2018:

The MARCI acquires a global view of the red planet and its weather patterns every day. Please click and play the movie (.mp4 file) to see how the weather on Mars changed during this time.

A major regional-scale dust storm continued across Mars this past week. At the start of the week, the dust storm expanded along the northern hemisphere from eastern Tharsis to Elysium. Dust over Arabia was transported north of Syrtis along the polar vortex, where it continued to spread eastward. During that time, the storm proliferated over the southern hemisphere, extending past the edge of the seasonal south polar ice cap, as far as the Mountains of Mitchel. By the end of the week, the storm stretched from Solis in the west to Cimmeria in the east, encompassing an area greater than 30 million square kilometers. Condensate water-ice clouds, typically observed above the major shield volcanoes of Tharsis, were absent during the second half of the week due to warmer atmospheric conditions caused by the storm. The Opportunity rover site in Endeavour Crater was completely obscured all week (Link to Mars Storm Watch). Meanwhile, the Curiosity rover in Gale Crater experienced elevated atmospheric opacities due to the massive storm on the other side of the planet.

This week’s MARCI “movie” can be downloaded HERE (8.8 MB .mp4 file).

This week’s MARCI “movie” can be downloaded HERE (8.8 MB .mov file).

Earlier Mars Weather Reports are available HERE.

About the Movie:

The movie (a .mp4 file that you can click and play, above) was generated from images obtained by the Mars Color Imager (MARCI) onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). During a nominal operational week, a total of about 273 MARCI images, taken in three of the camera’s seven color filter bands (420, 550, and 600 nanometer wavelengths), are map projected and mosaiced together to produce seven false-color daily global maps. These maps are then projected onto a sphere with north at the top and east to the right and with the mid-afternoon vantage point of an observer in the orbital plane (the imaginary plane that the planet draws out as it circles the Sun). Black areas in the movie are the result of data drops or high angle roll maneuvers by the spacecraft that limit the camera’s view of the planet. Equally-spaced blurry areas that run from south-to-north (bottom-to-top) result from the high off-nadir viewing geometry, a product of the spacecraft’s low-orbit, 250 km x 316 km (155 miles x 196 miles). The movie is rendered at a lower resolution than the intrinsic 1–2 km nadir resolution that the MARCI provides, so that it is practical to view and share via the Internet. The small white circles on these images of Mars indicate the locations of the Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity (on Meridiani Planum), and the Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity (in Gale Crater). Other locations on Mars referenced in the weather report can be found by referring to the map below. Note that the still image of Mars depicted at the top of this page is a single frame from the movie.