The red planet has scientists baffled by a strange phenomenon to which we cannot yet give an answer . It all started in 2012 when a group of amateur astronomers managed with their telescopes and high-resolution cameras, to capture some images with strange plumes of clouds emerging at the edge of the disk of Mars. Since then, the appearance of these huge clouds at sunrise on Mars remains a mystery .
The size of this mysterious and inexplicable cloud is also very striking: more than 200 kilometers high and about 500 kilometers horizontal . Never before have such outstanding figures been seen. At most, the thin layers of clouds had once exceeded 100 kilometers; But these data are exacerbated and there is concern about the fact that it could pose a risk for future missions in low orbit on Mars or even the Mars One project planned to launch in 2025 a first team of humans on Mars with the intention of living permanently in our neighbor planet.
The analysis of a selection of the most detailed images by a team from the University of the Basque Country (Spain) has determined that this plume appeared in the Martian region of Terra Cimmeria , in the mid-latitudes of the Southern hemisphere, and has made it possible to trace its visibility also determining its brightness at different wavelengths.
With these data, ” we have explored two possible scenarios to interpret the phenomenon: it could be either a cloud or an auroral emission”, indicates Agustín Sánchez-Lavega, co-author of the study published in the journal Nature .
If it is a cloud, it would be made up of crystallites 0.1 microns in size (one ten thousandth of a millimeter) but, in order for crystallites of water to form 200 km high, the temperature should drop more than 50 degrees compared to our current models on Mars. The other option is that the plume is the product of a light emission; However, this would imply an emission about 1,000 times more powerful than that of terrestrial auroras , something that is apparently unfeasible. So, for the moment, the voluminous cloud of Mars remains an enigma.
