It's been stormy lately at Gale Crater on Mars, home of NASA's Curiosity Rover. The Curiosity team took landscape views to keep an eye on wind activity. Their efforts paid off with a scenic GIF of a dust devil operating in the distance.
Spotting dust devils on Mars can be difficult and require a lot of image processing.
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"But this dust devil was so impressive that if you look closely you can see it moving to the right, on the border between the darker and lighter slopes, even in the raw images," wrote the atmospheric scientist Claire Newman, a member from the Curiosity team at Aeolis Research, in an update last week.
Curiosity records "dust devil films" in which part of the crater is observed and several images are taken over a certain period of time. The researchers study the formation, size, direction and duration of the whirlwinds. The dust devil in GIF performed his dance in early August.
The curiosity helps give scientists a more complete picture of the wind and dust that can scrub the red planet. "The dust measurements will help us track regional dust activity on Mars as seen from the surface and orbit in recent sols," Newman said. A "sol" is a day on Mars.
Mars is known for formidable dust storms, including the global storm in 2018 took out NASA's long-life opportunity rover. Unlike Opportunity, Curiosity doesn't rely on solar panels to stay alive. A little bit of dust and wind won't phase it and we can safely enjoy the view here on earth.
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