It might look like a postcard from Arizona, but this snapshot shows something much more exotic: the planet Mars, as seen by NASA’s Curiosity rover.
The image is a combination of 21 individual photographs the rover took recently to study a strange type of wispy cloud over its Gale Crater home. Scientists realized two Earth years ago that the cloud type was forming earlier in the Martian year than they expected. So this Martian year, Curiosity was watching for the early clouds, and it was not disappointed. The clouds did indeed show up beginning in late January, when the robotic skywatcher began documenting the wispy, ice-rich clouds scattering sunlight in sometimes-colorful displays.
“I always marvel at the colors that show up: reds and greens and blues and purples,” Mark Lemmon, an atmospheric scientist with the Space Science Institute in Colorado, said in a NASA statement. “It’s really cool to see something shining with lots of color on Mars.”