MRO MARCI Weather Report for the week of
19 December 2011 – 25 December 2011

Martian weather between 19 December 2011 and 25 December 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.

It was a tumultuous time for the weather on Mars this past week, as dust storm activity once again picked up with full force. The week began with large dust storms in Aonia and Cimmeria. The Cimmeria storm picked up steam and headed north towards the equator, even getting into Gusev Crater a bit mid-week, but dying out completely by the end of the week. The Aonia storm traveled east and exploded northward when it hit Argyre and the Nereidum Montes, even sending dust into eastern Valles Marineris. That storm also died out by the end of the week, but left some lingering dust haze in eastern Valles Marineris. Then mid-week a couple of new dust storms formed in Tempe and Acidalia, which then proceeded to loft dust up and over the seasonal and residual north polar caps, as well as to send dust southward through Acidalia and Chryse for several days. The storm was reduced to just dust haze by the end of the week. Water ice clouds were present over the major shield volcanoes throughout the week, as well as along the seasonal north polar cap edge and in Aonia. The MER-B Opportunity rover in Meridiani Planum saw only partially cloudy skies throughout the week, despite all of the other activity going on.

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.