Cloud motions on Mars

Abstract

A search of several thousand plates in the Lowell Observatory collection yielded 28 groups of plates on which the positions of well-defined transient bright spots (often assumed to be clouds) could be followed on a nearly daily basis. These groups of plates were from 15 different oppositions of Mars, starting from 1907 and ending with 1958. All but two of these spanned four nights or more, and the maximum interval covered was thirty nights. Whether they appeared to show motion or not, the successive positions and shapes of all apparently associated bright spots or clouds were plotted on Mercator projections with the use of a projection plate reader especially designed at the Planetary Research Center for planet image studies of this kind. Clouds near the limb were avoided.

The 28 groups of plates yielded 95 cloud histories. More than half appeared to be relatively stationary. Others showed definite motion well in excess of observational error but sometimes followed paths that partly doubled back upon themselves. The mean velocity for non-stationary clouds was found to be 5.6 km per hour, and the most commonly occurring direction of motion was eastward, particularly at high latitudes. The range of velocities found by this mapping procedure is nearly an order of magnitude smaller than values that have been estimated earlier by others from visual observations. These earlier observations are evidently in error, unless there exist clouds at high elevation, visible only on the limb, that can move much faster than those that were mapped from this photographic survey. More clouds were found in the northern hemisphere than in the southern, and there seemed to be an avoidance of the relatively darker areas of the Martian surface. Certain regions seem to be more favored than others. A few recurrences at identical positions suggest the existence of related topographic features.