MRO MARCI Weather Report for the week of
23 January 2012 – 29 January 2012

Martian weather between 23 January 2012 and 29 January 2012:

The MARCI acquires a global view of the red planet and its weather patterns every day. Please click and play the Quicktime movie (.mov file) to see how the weather on Mars changed during this time.

It was another quiet week weather-wise this past week on Mars. A few local, ephemeral dust storms occurred in Aonia and along the seasonal north polar cap edge in Arcadia at the end of the week, but all storms dissipated quickly. Water ice clouds were observed equatorially over Tharsis and Valles Marineris as the aphelion cloud belt continues to build up, as well as over the other major shield volcanoes of Alba Patera and Elysium. The MER-B rover Opportunity saw mostly clear skies throughout the week.

This week’s MARCI “movie” can be downloaded HERE (9.1 MB .mov file).

Earlier Mars Weather Reports are available HERE.

About the Quicktime Movie:
The movie (a .mov file that you can click and play, above) was generated from images obtained by the Mars Color Imager (MARCI) onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). During a nominal operational week, a total of about 273 MARCI images, taken in three of the camera’s seven color filter bands (420, 550, and 600 nanometer wavelengths), are map projected and mosaiced together to produce seven false-color daily global maps. These maps are then projected onto a sphere with north at the top and east to the right and with the mid-afternoon vantage point of an observer in the orbital plane (the imaginary plane that the planet draws out as it circles the Sun). Black areas in the movie are the result of data drops or high angle roll maneuvers by the spacecraft that limit the camera’s view of the planet. Equally-spaced blurry areas that run from south-to-north (bottom-to-top) result from the high off-nadir viewing geometry, a product of the spacecraft’s low-orbit, 250 km x 316 km (155 miles x 196 miles). The movie is rendered at a lower resolution than the intrinsic 1–2 km nadir resolution that the MARCI provides, so that it is practical to view and share via the Internet. The small white circle on these images of Mars indicate the location of the Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity (on Meridiani Planum). Other locations on Mars referenced in the weather report can be found by referring to the map below. Note that the still image of Mars depicted at the top of this page is a single frame from the Quicktime movie.

Malin Space Science Systems, Inc., San Diego, California, U.S.A.