Mars dust storm in motion
This series of images captured by the Visual Monitoring Camera onboard ESA’s Mars Express covers about 70 minutes of motion as a dust storm moves along the north polar ice cap of Mars on 29 May 2019. The storm moved with an approximate speed of 20 m/s. The polar ice cap covers much of the left of the image while the storm is seen on the right.
Mars Express was moving along its orbit but the images have been re-projected as if the observer was stationary, to make the motion of the storm clearer. The illumination angle of the Sun changes between image frames, highlighting the structures in the dust clouds.
The black margins arise from the variable distance of Mars Express to the planet along its orbit: closer to the planet it cannot always image the same parts of the surface in consecutive images.
