Clouds
Mars' dust storms can kick up fine particles in the atmosphere around which clouds can form. These clouds can form very high up, up to 100 km (62 mi) above the planet. The clouds are very faint and can only be seen reflecting sunlight against the darkness of the night sky. In that respect, they look similar to the mesospheric clouds, also known as noctilucent clouds on Earth, which occur about 80 km (50 mi) above our planet.
Read more about this topic: Climate Of Mars
Famous quotes containing the word clouds:
“Draw up the dew. Swell with pacific violence.
Take shape in silence. Grow as the clouds grew.
Beautiful brood the cornlands, and you are heavy;
Leafy the boughs—they also hide big fruit.”
—Cecil Day Lewis (1904–1972)
“I respect the ways of old folks, but the blood of a rooster or a goat cannot turn the seasons, change the course of the clouds and fill them up with water like bladders. The other night, at the ceremony for Legba, I danced and sang my fill: I am a black man, no? and I enjoyed it like a true Negro should. When the drums beat, I feel it in the pit of my stomach, I feel the itch in my hips and up and down my legs, I have got to join the party. But that is all.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)
“My mother, who hates thunderstorms,
Holds up each summer day and shakes
It out suspiciously, lest swarms
Of grape-dark clouds are lurking there....”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)