NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover recently captured a 1.2-mile-tall dust devil making its way along Thorofare Ridge. This ridge is located on the western rim of Mars’ Jezero Crater and the dust devil was determined to be moving east to west at about 12 mph.
Its width was estimated to be around 200 feet (60 meters), but we only get to see the bottom 387 feet of the swirling in the camera frame. Dust devils basically happen when rising cells of warm air mix with descending columns of cooler air. On Mars, they can grow to be much larger than those found on Earth.
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Mars dust devil caught in action! This video, which is sped up 20 times, was captured by one of my navigation cameras. 📸 More on what my team is learning: https://t.co/PhaOYOTrFH pic.twitter.com/vRaAVszcm5
— NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) September 29, 2023
We don’t see the top of the dust devil, but the shadow it throws gives us a good indication of its height. Most are vertical columns. If this dust devil were configured that way, its shadow would indicate it is about 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) in height,” said Mark Lemmon, a planetary scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
