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

Noctilucent clouds on Earth are something quite spectacular, thin structures so high that they can still catch sunlight long after sunset, making them shine in many colors during twilight – noctilucent means night-shining.

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.

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.

While the Martian clouds may look like the kind seen in Earth’s skies, they include frozen carbon dioxide, or dry ice.

Latin for “night shining,” noctilucent clouds (also known as twilight clouds) are responsible for Earth’s vibrant red, orange, and purple dawn and dusk skies. If the conditions are just right, they sometimes even take on an iridescent,

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