Martian weather between 26 January 2015 and 1 February 2015:

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

Weather conditions for the past week on Mars continued to show characteristics that resemble previous martian years. In the beginning of the week, local dust storms were observed in northern Amazonis and east of Alba Patera. Small dust lifting events were observed in the Syria region in the middle of the week. Slightly murky conditions occurred over Aonia as dust was suspended in the thin martian air throughout the week. Surface features of the northern plains were spotted, as the north polar hood was partially optically transparent over some areas on certain sols. Over the course of the week, afternoon water-ice clouds continued to loom over Arsia Mons, the southernmost volcano of the Tharsis Montes. Small clouds were also observed over the other Tharsis Montes volcanoes and Olympus Mons on most afternoons. Both rovers, Opportunity on Meridiani Planum and Curiosity in Gale Crater experienced storm-free skies each sol.

This week’s MARCI “movie” can be downloaded HERE (9.1 MB .mov file).

Earlier Mars Weather Reports are available HERE.

About the Quicktime Movie:

The movie (a .mov 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 Quicktime movie.