Clouds Over Mars

On February 16th 2015, it was announced that scientists had no explanation for the appearance of cloud plumes seen rising above the surface of Mars. The data being used was provided by amateur astronomers who first observed the clouds in the spring of 2012.

The cloud like plumes were enormous, reaching a height of 250 km above the Martian surface. The most logical of explanations is that the clouds were caused by either ice crystals or carbon dioxide gas. But due to the thinness of the Martian atmosphere, neither explanation seems plausible. One of the plumes developed in about 10 hours and lasted for 11 days.

Apparently, this was not the first time that the clouds of Mars had appeared. A look through the Hubble Space Telescope image archive from 1995 to 1999 and from 2001 to 2014 revealed an occasional cloud at the limb of Mars, but only at a height of up to 100 km. However, one set of images taken from Hubble on May 17th 1997 did reveal an abnormally high cloud plume similar to those that were seen in 2012.

Some scientists believe that the clouds might have been the result of an aurora like those found at the north and south poles here on earth. The northern and southern lights here on earth are caused by charged particles emanating from the sun and colliding with the earth's electromagnetic field. Mars does not have a magnetic field. Instead it only has pockets of magnetization, of which one cloud was observed over such an area.

But to explain the 2012 incidents, an aurora would have been 1,000 times brighter than the northern lights. There was not enough solar activity to produce that effect. So it is, that the clouds on Mars continue to go unexplained.