Moving clouds west of Hellas basin

Filed under best of, pretty pictures, animation, amateur image processing, Mars, Mars Express, atmospheres, weather and climate

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Nine images within one HRSC observation layered into an animation show moving clouds.

ESA / DLR / FU Berlin (G. Neukum) / animation by Emily Lakdawalla

The animation flickers because different frames were captured through different filters. (The order is: panchromatic, red, panchromatic, blue, panchromatic, green, panchromatic, infrared, panchromatic.)

The images were taken on October 14, 2010, on Mars Express' 8676th orbit, and show an area within Noachis Terra to the west of Hellas basin, around 45 degrees south, 38 east. The other component has to do with the different look angles of the different channels of HRSC and the significant thickness of the cloud layer. In the first frame, HRSC was looking forward (northward) along its south-to-north orbital path; in the last frame, it was looking backward (southward). Because of this changing perspective, the upper-level clouds appear to move southward with respect to the lower-level clouds.

Copyright holder: Emily Lakdawalla

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Contact us to request publication permission from the copyright holder. Original image data dated on or about October 14, 2010