MRO MARCI Weather Report for the week of
14 January 2013 – 20 January 2013

Martian weather between 14 January 2013 and 20 January 2013:

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.

This past week, dust storm activity continued to be prevalent all along the southern polar cap edge, particularly in Promethei, Cimmeria, Sirenum, southwest of the Hellas impact basin where several larger storms developed. The Acidalia storm track continued to remain active, with a large dust storm moving south along the Chryse/Xanthe corridor, spilling into eastern Valles Marineris and northwest Noachis by mid-week before slowly dissipating over the next 72 hours. The summits of the large volcanoes were relatively clear with the exception of water ice clouds over Arsia Mons, the southernmost of the Tharsis volcanoes. Higher altitude cloud streaks and the long shadows that they cast were visible south of Eos Chasma in eastern Valles Mariners. Diffuse water ice clouds also persisted over much of the mid-to-high latitudes of the northern hemisphere. Afternoon skies were storm-free all week over both the Opportunity site in Meridian and the Curiosity rover site in Gale Crater.

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 Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity (on Meridiani Planum), and the Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity (in Gale 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.