According to NASA, clouds are rarely found in the atmosphere of Mars, but they usually form at its equator at the very beginning.
These images allowed NASA's Curiosity teamget new information about the planet. The early clouds are at a higher height than the rest of the clouds, which usually hang about 60 km above the planet's surface and are composed of water ice. Clouds at high altitudes are likely composed of frozen carbon dioxide, NASA notes. Curiosity provided both black and white and color images - more detail is seen more clearly in black and white photos.
The researchers noted that when observing immediatelyafter sunset, ice crystals catch the dying light, so they appear to glow against a dark sky. These twilight clouds, also called “noctyl”, become brighter as they fill up with crystals and then darken as the sun gets lower. This is just one useful feature for researchers by which scientists determine how high they are.
Curiosity also took pictures of iridescent"Nacreous" clouds with pastel colors. Mark Lemmon, an atmospheric scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, says in a NASA report that these colors are caused by cloud particles that are nearly the same size. “This usually happens immediately after the formation of clouds, which grow at the same rate,” the scientists noted.
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