Curious, indeed! Our pal Curiosity recently captured "several whirlwinds carrying Martian dust across Gale Crater" on Mars, according to NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. These dust devils rise up when sunshine warms the ground, prompting convective rising of air. In the video below, timing is accelerated and contrast has been modified to make frame-to-frame changes easier to see, NASA JPL explained online. | Space.com

Dust Devils are so cool (from this distance!) This fascinating wind phenomenon occurs when cold air in the upper atmosphere reacts with with warm air close to the ground and creates a vortex. Seldom do we ever see one this defined though! | WeatherSpy

#PPOD: Dust Devil Dancing Across Mars Dust devils are whirlwinds of dust that are blown across Mars’s surface. They are one way that dust gets lifted into the Red Planet’s thin atmosphere and transported from one place to another. The High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express tracked this dust devil across the Martian surface on 20 November 2018. The dust devil was one of 1039 found as part of new research published in Science Advances, which used 20 years of images from E

This isn’t a tornado… it’s a Martian dust devil. 🌪️🔴 Captured by a Mars rover, this towering spiral of dust forms when the Sun heats the Martian surface, causing warm air to rise rapidly through colder air above. Because Mars has a thin atmosphere and lower gravity, these dust devils can grow much taller and wider than those on Earth, sometimes stretching hundreds of meters into the sky. #Mars #MarsSurface #astronomy #redplanet | Mars journey