There are many dust devils on Mars—little twisters that raise dust from the surface. They have also cleaned dust off of the solar panels of the rovers Opportunity and Spirit, improving the solar power production.

HiRISE sees many dust-devil tracks on Mars, but rarely captures an active feature because the images cover such small areas and because the typical time of day near 3 p.m. is past the peak heating and dust-devil activity. In this 2008 image in the Amazonis region, we got lucky, although not lucky enough to capture the whole swirl in the color strip.

Written by: Alfred McEwen  (15 February 2017)

More info and image formats at http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_009819_2130

Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona