MRO MARCI Weather Report for the week of
26 November 2007 – 02 December 2007

Martian Weather Between 26 November 2007 and 02 December 2007:

This is our second in a series of weekly Mars weather reports from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) Mars Color Imager (MARCI). Under nominal MRO operating conditions, the MARCI acquires a global view of the red planet and its weather patterns every day. However, the camera was turned off for the last three days of the previous week. Thus, we only have data for 26 through 29 November for this week’s weather report. Please click and play the Quicktime movie (.mov file) to see how the weather on Mars changed during this time.

Weather conditions across the planet were very typical for this time of year. Local dust storm activity was observed at mid-latitudes in both the northern in southern hemispheres, well away from the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) sites in Gusev Crater and western Meridiani. The most prominent storms were seen almost daily along the receding northern seasonal polar cap edge. These cap edge storms were only about half the size of the cap edge storms seen the previous week. At tropical latitudes, diffuse water ice clouds were seen over several major volcanoes, including Olympus Mons and the Tharsis Montes. Ground fog was observed on occasion in central Valles Marineris. At higher latitudes, clouds were observed over Tempe and in the southern highlands of Cimmeria.

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 last week by the Mars Color Imager (MARCI) onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). A total of about 273 MARCI images, taken in three of the camera’s seven color filter bands (420, 550, and 600 nanometer wavelengths), were map projected and mosaiced together to produce seven false-color daily global maps. These maps were 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 circles on these images of Mars indicate the locations of the two Mars Exploration Rovers, Opportunity (on Meridiani Planum) and Spirit (in Gusev Crater). 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. This single image is from the week covered by the current weather report and the Quicktime movie.

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