Striking example of carbon-dioxide-ice cloud on Mars

This image composite provides one of the most striking examples of a carbon-dioxide-ice (CO₂) cloud occurring in the mesosphere of Mars, imaged at different wavelengths. This was one of the first detections of a CO₂-ice cloud by the OMEGA instrument on board ESA’s Mars Express, and one of the first images ever to be identified as of CO₂-ice cloud. Here, the cloud stretches over the Terra Meridiani region, and covers an area more than 200 km wide.

The image also includes the spectrum obtained by OMEGA and showing that CO₂-ice is the actual composition of the cloud.