An enormous Martian cloud returns every spring. Scientists found out why. - Mashable

This is not what astrophysicist Jorge Hernández Bernal first saw in 2018 when the Mars Express Visual Monitoring Camera(Opens in a new window) — affectionately known by the European Space Agency as the — posted a new picture.

But Bernal, who was studying Martian meteorology at the University of the Basque Country in Spain, immediately recognized the shadow as something else: a mysterious weather phenomenon happening on the Red Planet.

That work was followed with a second report, recently published(Opens in a new window) in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, revealing just how the volcano makes this extraordinary cloud, alone in an otherwise cloudless southern Mars that time of year.

Just as southern Mars experiences spring, the cloud grows and stretches, making a wispy tail like a steam locomotive, over the mountain's summit.

While the realist in him said that recreational space travel is impractical — perhaps even unethical given the world's climate problems — he couldn't help but try to draw what the cloud might look like from the ground.

For about five to ten percent of the Martian year, the atmosphere is just right(Opens in a new window) to make the cloud, with the dusty sky helping moisture cling to the air.