Earth tones on Mars 🔴 At first glance, this Mars Express image might look a bit out of focus… but it’s not your eyes. You’re actually seeing a haze of fine dust swirling through the thin martian air — and if you look closely, you’ll spot four dust devils dancing across the surface! Captured over Arcadia Planitia, a relatively flat and ancient lava plain just northwest of Mars’s mighty volcanoes, this view is packed with striking colours and features. From wind-carved ridges called yardangs to a crater that hints at near-surface water ice, there’s plenty to discover in this one frame. The terrain here is shaped by wind, dust, and time. Notice how the colours shift from rust-reds to deep browns? That’s a sign of different materials — iron-rich sand in one part, silicate-rich in another — along with how particles of different sizes settle across the landscape. Those bright specks with pinkish trails? They’re not glitches. They’re dust devils, speedy mini-tornadoes of dust that form w...