NASA Mars Odyssey THEMIS Image: Ice Clouds in Color IR

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Context image credit: NASA/Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) Team
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This image shows two representations of the same infra-red image in the Elysium region of Mars. On the left is a grayscale image showing surface temperature, and on the right is a false-color composite made from 3 individual THEMIS bands. The false-color image is colorized using a technique called decorrelation stretch (DCS), which emphasizes the spectral differences between the bands to highlight compositional variations.

The light blue area in the center of this image is a very nice example of a water ice cloud. Water ice is frequently present in the Martian atmosphere as a thin haze. Clouds such as this one can be difficult to identify in a temperature images, but are easy to spot in the DCS images. In this case, the water ice is relatively confined and concentrated which may be due to the topography of the Elysium volcanic construct.

[Source: ASU THEMIS Science Team]

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) was developed by Arizona State University, Tempe, in collaboration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. The THEMIS investigation is led by Dr. Philip Christensen at Arizona State University. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the Odyssey project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Arizona State University