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PIA04050: Springtime North Polar Dust Storms
NASA's Mars Global Surveyor shows dust storms on Mars observed during the northern spring in May 2002. The north polar cap is the bright, frosty surface at the top.
 Target Name:  Mars
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) 
 Spacecraft:  Mars Global Surveyor Orbiter
 Instrument:  Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) 
 Product Size:  2048 x 1536 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  Malin Space Science Systems 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA04050.tif (5.168 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA04050.jpg (159.8 kB)  

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

MGS MOC Release No. MOC2-321, 12 December 2002

As on the Earth, many severe storms brew in the martian polar regions. Here, temperature contrasts between the cold carbon dioxide ("dry ice") seasonal frost cap and the warm ground adjacent to it--combined with a flow of cool polar air evaporating off the cap--sweeps up dust and funnels it into swirling dust storms along the cap edge. The dust storms shown here were observed during the recent northern spring by the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) in May 2002. The picture is a mosaic of daily global images from the MOC wide angle cameras. The north polar cap is the bright, frosty surface at the top.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/MSSS

Image Addition Date:
2002-12-17