Curiosity, NASA's Mars rover, has captured photographs of "shining" clouds above the Red Planet.
This image was constructed of 21 photos color-corrected, so the scene may be seen as how a human eye would see it.
Until NASA's scientists saw earlier-than-expected clouds in 2020, the agency was prepared to take some of them in mid-January 2021.
Ice crystals in the clouds reflect the setting sun's light.
"If you see a cloud with a shimmery pastel set of colours in it, that's because the cloud particles are all nearly identical in size," Mark Lemmon, an atmospheric scientist with the Space Science Institute in the US, said in NASA's blog.
"That's usually happening just after the clouds have formed and have all grown at the same rate," he added.
NASA Curiosity Rover Saw Wispy Puffs on Mars
According to The Verge, NASA's Curiosity rover described the clouds on Mars as "wispy puffs filled with ice crystals that scattered light from the setting sun, some of them shimmering with color."
The highest clouds reach 60 km above the surface on Mars. But NASA claimed these "early clouds" were at higher altitudes where it was very cold, indicating they were "possibly frozen carbon dioxide or dry ice."
"I always marvel at the colors that show up: reds and greens and blues and purples," Dr. Lemmon said in an ABC Australia report.
Dr. Lemmon added it's "really cool" to see brightly-colored objects on Mars.
The NASA scientist team is still researching the red planet's cloud patterns.
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