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 Cloud Shadow Movie / Zenith Movie pair was taken on Sol 4651 (2025-09-06) at approximately 14:27 LTST and a solar longitude of 135.67°. (What is this?)

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This Suprahorizon Movie was taken on Sol 1623 (2017-02-28) at approximately 12:42 LTST and a solar longitude of 325.3°. (What is this?)

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This Cloud Shadow Movie / Zenith Movie pair was taken on Sol 2529 (2019-09-17) at approximately 15:07 LTST and a solar longitude of 81.08°. (What is this?)

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This Suprahorizon Movie was taken on Sol 1128 (2015-10-09) at approximately 14:33 LTST and a solar longitude of 52.38°. (What is this?)

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This Zenith Movie was taken on Sol 1753 (2017-07-12) at approximately 8:12 LTST and a solar longitude of 32.21°. (What is this?)

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This Suprahorizon Movie was taken on Sol 4567 (2025-06-11) at approximately 14:21 LTST and a solar longitude of 95.65°. (What is this?)

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This Suprahorizon Movie was taken on Sol 2796 (2020-06-17) at approximately 13:12 LTST and a solar longitude of 221.85°. (What is this?)

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This Suprahorizon Movie was taken on Sol 3893 (2023-07-20) at approximately 11:44 LTST and a solar longitude of 93.14°. (What is this?)

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This Suprahorizon Movie was taken on Sol 2396 (2019-05-03) at approximately 9:31 LTST and a solar longitude of 20.05°. (What is this?)

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This Suprahorizon Movie was taken on Sol 3704 (2023-01-06) at approximately 9:11 LTST and a solar longitude of 5.64°. (What is this?)

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This Suprahorizon Movie was taken on Sol 3979 (2023-10-16) at approximately 10:03 LTST and a solar longitude of 133.88°. (What is this?)

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This Suprahorizon Movie was taken on Sol 3745 (2023-02-17) at approximately 8:54 LTST and a solar longitude of 25.7°. (What is this?)

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This Suprahorizon Movie was taken on Sol 3155 (2021-06-21) at approximately 11:08 LTST and a solar longitude of 61.89°. (What is this?)

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This Suprahorizon Movie was taken on Sol 813 (2014-11-19) at approximately 12:08 LTST and a solar longitude of 236.51°. (What is this?)

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This Suprahorizon Movie was taken on Sol 1946 (2018-01-26) at approximately 12:45 LTST and a solar longitude of 120.58°. (What is this?)

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This Zenith Movie was taken on Sol 1916 (2017-12-26) at approximately 6:40 LTST and a solar longitude of 106.28°. (What is this?)