NASA’s Mars Rover Spotted ‘Colorful Clouds’ on Red Planet

Despite being more than a decade old, NASA’s Curiosity rover is still delivering stunning images and insights from the surface of the Red Planet. Case in point: The workhorse rover recently snapped some of the clearest images of sun rays on Mars yet.

The pics were taken as the sun set over Mars on Feb. 2, and shows sunbeams—known as crepuscular rays—shooting through clouds in dramatic fashion. Along with being visually stunning, the image also builds off of research in Martian cloud formation and gives scientists insight into the weather patterns on Earth’s neighbor.

These pics were snapped as part of NASA’s twilight cloud survey, which began in January and will run through mid-March. The twilight clouds, which are also known as noctilucent or “night shining” in Latin, glow brightly against the darkening sky during sunset. That’s because they’re made of ice crystals, and only darken completely once the sun drops below their altitude. This process actually helps scientists on Earth determine their precise height in the sky.

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