Fig. 4: Daily monitoring of atmospheric opacity and characterization of dust particles and clouds.
From: The diverse meteorology of Jezero crater over the first 250 sols of Perseverance on Mars
a, OD derived from SkyCam images to follow the day–night cycle in the visual range (550 nm). Values are observed to be higher in the morning than in the afternoon, consistent with measurements made occasionally with MastCam-Z22. b, RDS observations also allow the derivation of the OD at a temporal resolution of 1 s, enabling the study of short-duration events, such as DD. An example of a temporal increase in opacity due to a nearby DD occurred on sol 21 around 15:11. c, An example of dust particle radius and OD estimation using RDS observations at different wavelengths and radiative transfer simulations. The best fit is obtained for an effective radius reff = 1.4 μm. d, Variation of the colour index (CI), defined as the ratio between RDS observations at zeniths at 450 and 950 nm (ref. 41) to the SZA measured on sol 296. The SZA of maximum CI indicates that this cloud layer is above 45 km. e, Aerosol OD (AOD) at 9 µm retrieved from TIRS observations for sols 30 and 200. TIRS observations enable AOD to be retrieved at all local times. The large diurnal variation for sol 200 is probably caused by water-ice clouds.
