[NEWS.NATIONALGEOGRAPHIC] An international network of amateur astronomers has spotted what looks like two plumes, or slender, cloudy projections, extending from the surface of Mars, and their professional counterparts have no clear idea of what they might be."Any explanation we can think of challenges our understanding of the upper atmosphere of Mars," says AgustÄ‚Ân SÄ‚Ä„nchez-Lavega, a professional astronomer at the University of the Basque Country, in Bilbao, Spain, and lead author of a report on the phenomenon in the journal Nature.
"The fact that it was seen by multiple observers suggests pretty strongly that it's real," says Bruce Jakosky, of the University of Colorado, Boulder, principal investigator for the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (MAVEN), which is currently orbiting the red planet. "But I find the observation puzzling." Jakosky was not involved in the research.
It's just dust raised from where they're filling in the old canals.
