Martian weather between 18 June 2018 and 24 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.

The planet-encircling dust event endured across Mars last week. As the week progressed, storm activity expanded over Solis-Sinai, Aonia, and Sirenum. Dusty conditions also continued from Isidis to Olympus and from Argyre to western Sirenum. Storm activity south of Hellas, reached deep over the polar interior above regions, Promethei and Cimmeria, for much of the week. Meanwhile, dust lifting centers over Noachis slightly contracted away from the seasonal south polar ice cap edge. Minor clearing was spotted over portions of Acidalia and Arabia on some afternoons. Looking to the northern hemisphere, water-ice clouds associated with the developing north polar hood propagated eastward. Clouds remained absent over the Tharsis volcanoes each sol. Overall, the martian atmosphere was dusty between the seasonal south polar ice cap and the north polar vortex. Skies above both rover sites Gale Crater (Curiosity) and Endeavour Crater (Opportunity) remained completely obscured each afternoon.

This week’s MARCI “movie” can be downloaded HERE (8.9 MB .mp4 file).

This week’s MARCI “movie” can be downloaded HERE (8.9 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.