At 11:19:46 UTC the Mastcam Left took another picture of the inner rim of Gale crater, this time strongly veiled by a thick haze, about a month after the previous picture (see https://www.facebook.com/PianetaMarte.MdM/posts/2905342732882234).
To get a better idea of how much haze is really present, it is very useful to compare it with the image taken last January 16, in particularly good visibility conditions (see https://www.facebook.com/PianetaMarte.MdM/posts/2668016023281574).
Note also how in the upper edge of the hills in the distance you can see the whitish plumes that extend and fade upward, as if they were dense steam fumes, personally it is the first time I observe a similar phenomenon!
To complete the picture of the situation I add that in the previous Sol (Sol 2779 at the time is not reported) the maximum ground temperature reached even +18 ° C (Sol 2772) and that this photo was taken at 12:13:13 LTST (Local True Solar Time), then at a time of day Martian where usually the morning haze should have dissolved.
The original image is a black and white encoding of the Bayer mask that has been converted to color through a process called “debayering” or “demosaicing”. In addition, the photo has undergone noise reduction due to Jpeg compression, white balance and a slight increase in microcontrast and color saturation in order to make the colors more similar to what the human eye would see.
Original image: https://mars.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/02779/mcam/2779ML0145530000606345C00_DXXX.jpg
This post has been automatically translated. See the original post here.