1995 OBSERVATIONS OF MARTIAN DUST STORMS USING THE HUBBLE-SPACE-TELESCOPE

A synoptic monitoring program of Mars using the Wide Field Planetary C amera 2 on board the Hubble Space Telescope has resulted in the observ ation of discrete dust activity for two dates following the 1995 oppos ition. Data obtained an April 8 (L(S) = 82 degrees) and August 21, 199 5 (L(S) = 145 degrees) reveal the presence of local dust storms in the northern polar region. In addition, the August images show activity o ver the Hellas basin. We present a multispectral analysis of the data from which we derive lower bounds to the atmospheric dust loading. Our technique directly models the absolute photometry, and consequently a lso provides estimates of the cloud opacity and the ozone columns for the regions analyzed.