What is this curious cloud on Mars?

i will guess meteor but im probly wrong .

I'm going with volcanic activity, wasn't it just the other day we realized Mercury has more tectonic activity then we thought.

arstechnica.com...

It is NOT A CLOUD, it's what mars' northern lights are in that 10% atmosphere it has there, relative earth's pressure;
The aurora effect is tighter and deeper in comparison to earth's.

mystery solved.

atmospheric disturbance or lense fail on the telescope.

reply to post by omegazap

Mars has no magnetosphere. No north magnetic pole. No south magnetic pole. No aurora. At least nothing like an aurora on Earth.

reply to post by yourmaker


A lens problem idea was ruled out by the guy who got the images, the animation also proves it wrong. As does another amateur astronomer who has it in his data set.

Jim Phillips says: March 21, 2012 at 3:48 pm Processing Mars images from last night. The feature you have captured is definitely real! It is present on my initial images especially in the blue channel. Jim

Source (Although I've not seen any of his pics yet, they could be worth money to the right people! )


Just a thought, do any of the rovers on mars have any seismic equipment on-board? I hope Nasa weighs in soon!

edit, Spirit was planned to be used to measure planet 'wobbles' since it had become stuck, but its given up the ghost!! So annoying! Opportunity doesn't seem to have seismic vibration tools (from what I've just read), only a means to investigate already occurred volcanism... doh!

I wonder if Odyssey manage to collect any info?

NASA has approved a fourth two year extended mission, through August 2012, to allow for the observation of year-to-year differences in phenomena like polar ice, clouds, and dust storms, as well as a much more sensitive mapping of martian minerals. A fifth extended mission (to July 2014) would be likely if Curiosity lands successfully in late 2012. The orbiter contains enough propellant to operate at least until 2015. In 2010, a spokesman for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory stated that Odyssey could continue operating until at least about 2016 and "perhaps even well beyond".[5]

From here:

Nuke testing from secret bases?

Nasa will be using the Thermal Emission Imaging System, or THEMIS, which is one of the instruments on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter to study the area in the coming days.

"In the command upload we're preparing to send today, we've included observations that will hopefully capture some of these recent clouds," Hill wrote in an email. "Our THEMIS camera on Mars Odyssey is capable of acquiring simultaneous visible and thermal infrared images, so our atmospheric researchers are pretty excited about the possibility of not only getting a good look at the cloud structures, but also their temperatures. THEMIS will be checking out heightened cloud activity around Mars' shield volcanoes as well as around the southern site spotted by the amateurs. Pictures from a camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, called the Mars Color Imager, or MARCI, might provide further clues about the southern cloud feature. And amateur astronomers are sending out the alert for observers to keep a close watch on the Red Planet over the coming days.

Mars, planet/Goddess of War!
There are steady rumors of an interplanetary war.
Some base got destroyed?

Isn't it amazing, for all my life I was told Mars was a dead planet, nothing could live there, no water, no building blocks of life and then recently BLAM, Mars is almost infested with things going on.

I know our tech has improved but it just shows how little we really PUBLICLY know about anywhere.

Sounds like there is more and more reason to develop some way of mass producing orbital platforms to capture things like this and check it out in a timely manner. The more we're discovering even the known Solar System is a fluid and changing place, it seems the need for rather simpler probes, but more of them is becoming pretty strong. At least it seems that way to me...

This seems like quite a mystery given what that Off-site set of comments had to say about altitude. If it's well outside any real atmosphere, as that suggests, then that really does narrow down what it can or can't be right? Maybe Mars got a serious asteroid strike and we'll finally get to see the short term effects in some detail. I'm not sure we really have, except for a couple into the Gas giants or Pluto, right?

I can't wait to hear more when NASA gets something into position for a good look!

reply to post by wutz4tom

Equally interesting is the fact that it wasnt until the first astromer spoke up,(or got the okay to??)..Only then did others start to come forward...

Fascinating. How is it supposed to work if no-one goes first?

reply to post by Alda1981



great answer as to what it is!

i have to go with meteor

Probably the U.S. attacked another secret Nazi base with their Mars based haarp weapon which caused a massive earthquake triggering dormant volcanoes


Or it's just reflected light from Venus


Or a cloud

I'd say it's a rock formation. Possibly a weather balloon.

reply to post by moniker


How does a rock formation end up 250 km's above the surface?
Ahhh... Balloon
Your having me on! Surely....

Without more data, I'm not even going to try to guess.

I'd like to see some high resolution shots of the surface from anything with a camera currently orbiting Mars.

If cause is anything geological, or impact related that could cause a plume that size, it's likely to have left a mark.

I doubt these are any kind of nuclear explosion but I did think. They did do this on and above earth. Can anyone at least reference a explosion on earth? If I was to test nuclear I would def pic mars before earth. Also the atmosphere and gravity on mars could make, plumes and such go higher than on earth.