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Scientists follow a strange white cloud that appeared on the surface of Mars.
The gigantic cloud is about 1500 km long and is located near the equator of the planet, near the Arsia Mons volcano.
There has been no active volcano on Mars for half a century, so ESA scientists are pretty sure it does not involve volcanic eruptions.
"Despite its location, this atmospheric feature is not related to volcanic activity, but rather to a cloud of water ice driven by the influence of the leeward slope of the volcano on the airflow – this that scientists call an orographic cloud or phenomenon in this region, "explained the European Space Agency (ESA) who called the cloud" curious ".
The cloud has changed and developed throughout the Martian day. It is now big enough to see from telescopes on Earth.
"The formation of water ice clouds is sensitive to the amount of dust present in the atmosphere," explained ESA, which was monitoring the cloud with the infrared mineralogical spectrometer ( OMEGA) and high resolution stereoscopic camera (HRSC) on Mars Express spacecraft.
Naturally, some corners of the Internet believe that there may be some kind of volcanic eruption at the origin of the cloud.
This conspiracy theory was quickly abolished by scientists.
I do not understand the conspiracy theory contingent that goes off about the clouds on Arsia Mons.
Why should we hide the volcanic eruptions on Mars? Heck, NASA has shared many pictures of volcanoes erupting on Io (shown here) & geysers on Enceladus! pic.twitter.com/3zXLXnCKSa
– Dr. Tanya Harrison (@tanyaofmars) October 24, 2018
Space agencies will study these images, obtained after the big dust storm that invaded Mars in June and July, to gather important information on the effect of dust on cloud development and its variability throughout the world. 'year.
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