Ice Clouds over a Red Planet

Ice Clouds over a Red Planet

Image Credit:
NASA,
JPL-Caltech,
Kevin M. Gill;
Processing:
Rogelio Bernal Andreo

Explanation:
If you could stand on Mars — what might you see?

You might look out over a
vast orange landscape covered with rocks under a dusty orange sky,
with a blue-tinted
Sun setting over the horizon,
and odd-shaped water clouds hovering high overhead.

This was just
the view captured last March by NASA’s rolling explorer,
Perseverance.

The orange coloring is caused by
rusted iron in the Martian dirt,
some of which is small enough to be
swept up by winds into the atmosphere.

The blue tint near the setting Sun is caused by
blue light being preferentially scattered out from the
Sun by the floating dust.

The light-colored clouds on the right are likely composed of
water-ice and appear high in the
Martian atmosphere.

The shapes of some of these clouds are
unusual for Earth and remain a topic of research.