MRO MARCI Weather Report for the week of
20 October 2008 – 26 October 2008

Martian weather between 20 October 2008 and 26 October 2008:

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.

Increased dust activity continued across Mars this past week. A sub-regional dust storm formed and lingered over eastern Chryse and west Arabia throughout the week. A suspended dust haze left over from the regional storm in the area a couple weeks ago persisted in Valles Marineris, the large canyon system on Mars. Small, local dust storms also kicked up throughout the southern mid-latitudes, especially across and adjacent to Hellas. Towards the end of the week dust activity picked up along the north polar cap edge and moved south into Tempe/Acidalia, while a large local dust storm was observed moving across the northern plains northwest of Olympus Mons. The Phoenix lander experienced storm-free afternoon skies throughout the week, although a local dust storm formed over the polar outliers directly to the north of Phoenix at the end of the week. The Opportunity rover in Meridiani saw some diffuse dust haze associated with the Chryse/Arabia sub-regional storm to the north, while Spirit in Gusev Crater remained storm-free with only scattered water-ice cloud cover throughout the week.

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 circles on these images of Mars indicate the locations of the two Mars Exploration Rovers, Opportunity (on Meridiani Planum) and Spirit (in Gusev Crater), and the Phoenix landing site (north polar region). 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.