Science is beginning to understand the origin of a curious cloud 1,800 km long in Mart which appears daily for several of the warmest months on one of the largest volcanoes on the red planet.
Until now, it was difficult to observe this cloud initially photographed by a Russian spacecraft in the 1970s and located in 2018 by the European spacecraft. Mars Express, Explained the European Space Agency (IS IN).
But a scientific team turned to “a secret instrument of Mars Express of Mart“, A surveillance camera called “VMC”, explained Jorge Hernández Bernal, of the University of the Basque Country of Bilbao (Spain), in a communiqué of the IS IN.
All thanks to a webcam
With a resolution equivalent to that of a simple one webcam, This camera had been used briefly in 2003, shortly after the launch of Mars Express. Then it had a sporadic use for educational operations.
But unlike the much more sophisticated scientific instruments of the probe, the camera VMC has “a large field of view (…) and is well adapted to monitoring the evolution of the phenomenon” of the cloud, according to Bernal, which confirms a study on the Journal of Geophysical Research.
The observation revealed that during the spring and summer in the southern Martian hemisphere, the cloud of Mart every dawn is formed on the flank of the volcano Arsia Mons.
Composed of water vapor and ice crystals, the cloud rises with the first rays to about 40 km altitude, well above the 17 km of the ancient volcano. The winds pull it west at a speed of 600 km / h, reaching a length of 1,800 km.
The phenomenon does not exceed two and a half hours, before dispersing.
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