Finally, here is an interesting image of Mars, brought to us by the beloved Curiosity Rover. 

It’s the windy season on the red planet, and that means increased aeolian activity at the surface. Additionally, it’s almost summer in Gale Crater, and the surface is heating up, causing stronger convection currents than at other times of the Martian year. This leads to convective vortices, which, per the mission update blog: consist of fast winds whipping around low-pressure cores. If those vortices are strong enough, they can raise dust from the surface and become visible as “dust devils” that we can image with our cameras.

The animated GIF here shows a dust devil movie taken with Curiosity’s Navcam and covering a period of about five minutes. You can see the wispy dust devil moving through the upper third of the GIF from left to right.

Dust devils. On Mars, y’all. I love planetary science.

More Information

Mars Science Laboratory mission blog