Science & Exploration
Mottled clouds of dust in a martian storm
Clouds of dust visible on the martian surface from the perspective of the Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) on ESA’s Mars Express. The clouds form part of a large dust storm churning at the martian North Pole on 29 May 2019.
The pattern of small cloud cells is caused by closed-cell convection, a type of convection which creates similar cloud shapes on Earth. The granular cells have horizontal sizes of 20–40 km.
Imaging of this storm by the VMC allowed the measurement of the height of the cells.
Measurement of the size of shadows cast by the cells, combined with knowledge of the position of the Sun, revealed that the cells are between 6–11 km above the surface of the Red Planet.
