Although Mars is a very different world to our own, we often see similar phenomena there – one example being dust devils, which are typically found in dry desert landscapes here on Earth.

On Mars, these short-lived, fast-moving dust tornadoes regularly snake their way across the planet’s broad plains. They form as Mars’s surface becomes hot in the afternoon and warms the air layers sitting just above it, causing air to rise, creating a vortex, and dragging dust and sand up with it. We’ve spotted especially large dust devils lasting on Mars for over an hour, although many smaller ones can fizzle out in just a few minutes.

While similar in many ways, martian dust devils are far larger than those found on Earth due to the more extreme temperature differences on our neighbouring planet. They can move as fast as 45 m/s and tower up to 8 km high (not far off the height of Mount Everest).

This HRSC image shows four dust devils, visible as small bright spots with trailing pinkish shadows (see labelled image). The shadows are a result of the dust devils moving rapidly while the image was captured.