Martian Clouds Daily

• Posting cloud movies taken by the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover twice daily • Maintained by @dchayes.ca [Bluesky] • Not run by NASA/JPL • Header/profile: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS •

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Basic Info Masterpost

What is this?

Twice a day, this account will post a random cloud movie taken by the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity rover. Not every movie will have clouds; just like Earth, Mars has both cloudy and clear-sky days!

What do the captions mean?

Each movie is accompanied by a caption containing some information about when it was taken:

Movie type: Pretty self-explanatory - what kind of movie is being shown. See below for more details.

Sol number: How many Martian days the rover had been on the surface when the movie was taken.

Earth date: Another self-explanatory one. What day it was on Earth when the movie was taken.

LTST: Local True Solar Time - what time of day (on Mars!) the movie was taken at.

Solar longitude: A number that tells us where Mars is located in its orbit. A solar longitude of 0° corresponds to the northern spring equinox, with each subsequent season starting 90° later.

Movie types

There are three different types of movies that this account will be posting. They are all basically the same, with the only significant change being what direction the camera is pointing.

Zenith Movie (ZM): Points towards the zenith directly over the rover. Used to determine the angular speed of the clouds and the wind direction.

Suprahorizon Movie (SHM): Points 26° above the horizon, just over the rim of Gale Crater (Curiosity's home for the last 10+ years). Used to better examine the shapes of the clouds.

ZM/Cloud Shadow Movie (CSM): These two movies, taken right after each other, form a "Cloud Altitude Observation" (CAO), which is used to determine the altitude of the clouds using trigonometry. It consists of a ZM and a Cloud Shadow Movie that points at Mount Sharp (the central mountain in Gale Crater) to watch cloud shadows move up and down the side of the mountain.

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This Zenith Movie was taken on Sol 2670 (2020-02-09) at approximately 6:28 LTST and a solar longitude of 148.2°. (What is this?)

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This Suprahorizon Movie was taken on Sol 1636 (2017-03-14) at approximately 14:36 LTST and a solar longitude of 332.72°. (What is this?)

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This Suprahorizon Movie was taken on Sol 3986 (2023-10-23) at approximately 9:48 LTST and a solar longitude of 137.39°. (What is this?)

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This Suprahorizon Movie was taken on Sol 471 (2013-12-03) at approximately 13:23 LTST and a solar longitude of 57.59°. (What is this?)

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This Suprahorizon Movie was taken on Sol 633 (2014-05-18) at approximately 16:20 LTST and a solar longitude of 132.48°. (What is this?)

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This Suprahorizon Movie was taken on Sol 1206 (2015-12-28) at approximately 16:09 LTST and a solar longitude of 87.49°. (What is this?)

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This Zenith Movie was taken on Sol 1541 (2016-12-06) at approximately 15:18 LTST and a solar longitude of 275.2°. (What is this?)

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This Suprahorizon Movie was taken on Sol 2476 (2019-07-25) at approximately 10:15 LTST and a solar longitude of 57.19°. (What is this?)

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This Suprahorizon Movie was taken on Sol 2993 (2021-01-06) at approximately 11:48 LTST and a solar longitude of 343.56°. (What is this?)

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This Zenith Movie was taken on Sol 3647 (2022-11-09) at approximately 8:29 LTST and a solar longitude of 335.48°. (What is this?)

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This Suprahorizon Movie was taken on Sol 3389 (2022-02-17) at approximately 10:25 LTST and a solar longitude of 175.85°. (What is this?)

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This Suprahorizon Movie was taken on Sol 4830 (2026-03-08) at approximately 9:15 LTST and a solar longitude of 239.96°. (What is this?)

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This Cloud Shadow Movie / Zenith Movie pair was taken on Sol 4664 (2025-09-19) at approximately 16:25 LTST and a solar longitude of 142.31°. (What is this?)

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This Suprahorizon Movie was taken on Sol 155 (2013-01-12) at approximately 12:25 LTST and a solar longitude of 243.41°. (What is this?)

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This Suprahorizon Movie was taken on Sol 4256 (2024-07-27) at approximately 9:59 LTST and a solar longitude of 300.64°. (What is this?)

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This Zenith Movie was taken on Sol 3046 (2021-03-02) at approximately 17:39 LTST and a solar longitude of 11.11°. (What is this?)