There's a Strange Cloud on Mars Right Now, and It's Just Hanging Around

[Judi Lynn]

By Meghan Bartels, Space.com Senior Writer | October 25, 2018 03:00pm ET

- click for image -

https://img.purch.com/h/1400/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5zcGFjZS5jb20vaW1hZ2VzL2kvMDAwLzA4MC8yNzEvb3JpZ2luYWwvbWFycy0xMDEwMTguanBn

An instrument aboard the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft captured this image of a strange cloud on the Red Planet on Oct. 10, 2018.
Credit: ESA/GCP/UPV/EHU Bilbao, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO


For more than a month now, a European orbiter circling Mars has been watching a long, plume-like cloud on the Red Planet.

The cloud has remained in place over a mountain called Arsia Mons near the Martian equator since Sept. 13, according to a statement released by the European Space Agency (ESA). But that location is just a coincidence, the agency adds. No volcanic process is producing the cloud — the volcano hasn't been active in about 50 million years, scientists believe.

The same spacecraft, called Mars Express, and its predecessors have spotted similar clouds on at least three previous occasions, and those structures formed around the same time in the Martian year. And that's not a coincidence, the ESA wrote.

The cloud is full of water ice, the agency continued, created by air flow along the side of the volcano. This means the feature is what scientists call an orographic or lee cloud. That also happens to mean that the cloud changes over the course of the day as atmospheric patterns on Mars change.

More:
https://www.space.com/42257-strange-mars-cloud-on-mars-photos.html?utm_source=sdc-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20181026-sdc

[Crutchez_CuiBono]

1. Has the terraforming begun?

I saw this on "secureteam' a few days ago. Love the info, but, the guys a trump supporter so it's a rare stop there. Very interesting indeed.

[MontanaMama]

2. I might as well be the first...

[Moostache]

3. That's no cloud...they started building a wall after our TV signals warned them!!

The Martians are content to laugh at the shit hole planet and don't want us getting in their planet too!!!

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. "Dense clouds of smoke or dust, visible through a powerful telescope on earth ...

... as little grey, fluctuating patches, spread through the clearness of the planet's atmosphere and obscured its more familiar features."

The Eve of the War