MRO MARCI Weather Report for the week of
27 October 2008 – 2 November 2008

Martian weather between 27 October 2008 and 2 November 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.

Dust activity continued on Mars this past week, as the season moved into later northern summer. The local dust storm that formed northwest of Olympus Mons in Arcadia the previous week persisted for a few days and then slowly dissipated. Several other isolated, local dust storms were observed for one to two days in Elysium, Noachis, and Hellas. Valles Marineris remained filled with suspended dust throughout the week, but began to clear out slowly. Intense dust storm activity occurred along the north polar cap edge this past week, with dust storms occurring over the Olympia dune fields and over the polar outliers to the north of Phoenix. These storms produced a diffuse dust haze that traveled over the lander and moved south into Tempe and Acidalia. The MER rover Opportunity also experienced some diffuse dust throughout the week, while Spirit only saw scattered water-ice cloud cover. Water ice clouds were also observed throughout the southern mid-latitudes for the duration of 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.