Media Information

 
 
 
Collection:
NASA Planetary Photo Journal Collection
Title:
Clouds over 'Endurance' on Sol 290
Original Caption Released with Image:
Clouds add drama to the sky above "Endurance Crater" in this mosaic of frames taken by the navigation camera on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity at about 9:30 a.m. on the rover's 290th sol (Nov. 16, 2004). The view spans an arc from east on the left to the southwest on the right.

These clouds are part of a band that forms near the equator when Mars is near the part of its orbit that is farthest from the Sun. For Opportunity (and Spirit and the rest of the southern hemisphere), this occurs in late fall and early winter. During this period, atmospheric temperatures and the amount of water vapor combine to form large-scale clouds. These clouds look like Earth's cirrus clouds and share other similarities with cirrus clouds in that they are believed to be composed entirely of water-ice particles with sizes on the order of several micrometers (a few ten-thousandths of an inch).

The images that are combined to produce this view have been processed to remove geometrical distortion associated with the camera's 45-degree field of view. In addition, special image processing has been applied to enhance the clouds and make them visible across the entire mosaic. The rim of Endurance was processed using the same technique, illustrating how much enhancement was done. Glare from the Sun washed out the clouds on the left in the original images; this glare was removed.
Image Credit:
NASA/JPL
Produced By:
JPL
Mission:
Mars Exploration Rover (MER)
Spacecraft:
Opportunity
Target Name:
Mars
Is a satellite of:
Sol (our sun)
Instrument:
Navigation Camera
Product Size:
1907 samples x 607 lines
facet_what:
Sun
facet_what:
Crater
facet_what:
Earth
facet_what:
Spirit
facet_what:
Mars
facet_what:
Opportunity
facet_what:
Sol
facet_what:
Mars Exploration Rover (MER)
facet_what:
Navigation Camera (NC)
facet_where:
Mars
facet_where:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
Image #:
PIA07105
UID:
SPD-PHOTJ-PIA07105
orignial url:

Clouds over 'Endurance' on Sol 290