Big Dust Devils

28 January 2004
Northern Amazonis Planitia is famous for its frequent, large (> 1 km high) dust devils. They occur throughout the spring and summer seasons, and can be detected from orbit, even at the ~240 meters (~278 yards) per pixel resolution of the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) wide angle instruments. This red wide angle image shows a plethora of large dust devils. The arrow points to an example. Shadows cast by the towering columns of swirling dust point away from the direction of sunlight illumination (sun is coming from the left/lower left). This December 2004 scene covers an area more than 125 km (> 78 mi) across and is located near 37°N, 154°W.