At the surface, Mars is a desolate, barren world with a rocky landscape, massive dust storms and extreme temperature swings. However, a rover recently captured a splash of color in the sky as rare clouds drifted overhead.

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,

NASA’s Curiosity rover captured stunning images of Martian twilight clouds, revealing iridescent dry ice formations on Mars.

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