The iridescent cloud reveals new clues about ice formation in the Martian atmosphere (no little green men, sorry).

Curiosity, a set of NASA 's robotic "eyes" on the Red Planet, recorded 16 minutes of so-called noctilucent clouds flying overhead on Jan. 17. These clouds, sometimes referred to as twilight clouds because they're too faint to see in daylight, appear iridescent by scattering light from the setting sun.

Red-and-green-tinted clouds drift through the Martian sky in a new set of images captured by NASA's Curiosity rover using its Mastcam—its main set of "eyes." Taken over 16 minutes on Jan. 17 (the 4,426th Martian day,

NASA’s Curiosity rover has captured breathtaking images of red and green-tinted clouds drifting across the Martian sky. These clouds, called noctilucent clouds (which means “night shining” in Latin), appear at twilight and are visible because the setting sun scatters light through them.

The Sun sets differently on Mars. Part of that is due to its distance from the star (an average of 142 million miles versus Earth’s roughly 93 million miles), but it also has to do with the planet’s atmosphere. A great example of the effects can be seen in the Red Planet’s noctilucent clouds.

The phenomenon of twilight clouds was first observed on Mars in 1997 during NASA’s Pathfinder mission. However, it wasn’t until 2019 that the Curiosity Rover captured the firs