MRO MARCI Weather Report for the week of
18 July 2011 – 24 July 2011

Martian weather between 18 July 2011 and 24 July 2011:

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 picked up again this past week on Mars. Starting with local dust storms over Kasei Valles at the beginning of the week, these quickly expanded to a more regional dust storm covering Tempe, Acidalia, Chryse, and northeastern Valles Marineris by mid-week. By the end of the week the north mid-latitudes of Tempe, Acidalia, Utopia, and north of Arabia were still extremely dusty, but further south in Chryse and Xanthe only dust haze remained. Short-lived, local dust storms were also observed in Amazonis, Elysium, and Phlegra throughout the week. Despite all this, the southern mid- and high-latitudes remained fairly clear throughout the week. Water ice clouds occurred over Arsia Mons, Acidalia, and Arcadia throughout the week as well. The Opportunity rover experienced only somewhat hazy skies in Meridiani Planum.

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 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.

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