One dust devil scoots across the center of the view in this movie clip
showing a few dust devils inside Mars' Gusev Crater. The clip consists of
frames taken by the navigation camera on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover
Spirit during the rover's 543rd martian day, or sol (July 13, 2005).
Spirit began seeing dust devil activity around the beginning of Mars'
spring season. Activity increased as spring continued, but fell off again
for about two weeks during a dust storm. As the dust storm faded away,
dust devil activity came back. In the mid-afternoons as the summer
solstice approached, dust devils were a very common occurrence on the
floor of Gusev crater. The early-spring dust devils tended to move
southwest-to-northeast, across the dust devil streaks in Gusev seen from
orbit. Increasingly as the season progresses, the dust devils are seen
moving northwest-to-southeast, in the same direction as the streaks.
Scientists are watching for the big dust devils that leave those streaks.
In this clip, contrast has been enhanced for anything in the images that
changes from frame to frame, that is, for the dust moved by wind. The
total time elapsed during the taking of these frames was 8 minutes, 21
seconds.
