Mysterious Dust Cloud, ‘Christmas Lights’ Surrounding Mars Has NASA Scientists Puzzled

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Mysterious Dust Cloud, ‘Christmas Lights’ Surrounding Mars Has NASA Scientists Puzzled
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Aurora on Mars
Artist’s conception of MAVEN’s Imaging UltraViolet Spectrograph (IUVS) observing the “Christmas Lights Aurora” on Mars. MAVEN observations show that aurora on Mars is similar to Earth’s “Northern Lights” but has a different origin. Image Credit: University of Colorado

COLORADO (CBS SF) — NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Spacecraft (MAVEN) has observed some puzzling atmospheric phenomena above the red planet. One of them has been billions of years in the making.

Just five days before Christmas, MAVEN saw a bright auroral glow in Mars’ northern hemisphere. We see aurorae at the highest latitudes on Earth — the northern and southern lights — when energetic particles crash into our atmosphere and cause the gas to glow. However, Earth’s light show pales in comparison to the aurora on Mars.

“What’s especially surprising about the aurora we saw is how deep in the atmosphere it occurs – much deeper than at Earth or elsewhere on Mars,” said Arnaud Stiepen, IUVS team member at the University of Colorado. “The electrons producing it must be really energetic