MRO MARCI Weather Report for the week of
16 May 2016 – 22 May 2016

Martian weather between 16 May 2016 and 22 May 2016:

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.

For the past week on Mars, dust storm activity was frequently spotted over the southern highlands and northern lowlands. Throughout the week, local-scale dust storms occurred over terrain just north of the seasonal south polar ice cap edge. Looking just a bit further north, Solis, Aonia, northern Noachis, and Cimmeria also experienced transient dust-lifting activity. At the same time, on the other side of the red planet, dust storms were observed over Acidalia, Olympia and Arcadia. Focusing on the equatorial latitudes, condensate water-ice clouds were present over the slopes of Elysium, the volcanoes of Tharsis, and the plateaus near Valles Marineris. Alba Patera, Tempe, and Deuteronilus also faced water-ice clouds. Each sol, both rovers, Curiosity in Gale Crater and Opportunity in Endeavour Crater encountered storm-free skies.

This week’s MARCI “movie” can be downloaded HERE (9.0 MB .mov file).

This week’s MARCI “movie” can be downloaded HERE (9.0 MB .mp4 file).

Earlier Mars Weather Reports are available HERE.

About the 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 movie.

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