Amateur astronomers are puzzling over a seemingly anomalous cloud that has shown up on images of Mars taken over the past few days. Is it really a cloud, or a trick of the eye? Does it really extend 150 miles up from the surface, as some of the observers suggest? And what churned up all that stuff, anyway?
"And that's how it was for the next ten nights.
A flare, spurting out from Mars - bright green, drawing a green mist behind it - a beautiful, but somehow disturbing sight.
Ogilvy, the astronomer, assured me we were in no danger. He was
convinced there could be no living thing on that remote, forbidding planet."