Video: UAE's Hope Probe captures rare images of Red Planet

The Emirates Mars Mission has released unique images of the Red Planet.

They could help us understand how Mars lost the thicker atmosphere it had billions of years ago.

The pictures, taken by the Hope Probe’s EMUS (Emirates Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer) instrument, show a ghostly glow known as the 'discrete aurora'.

Its intricate patterns trace out the regions where Mars’ enigmatic crustal magnetic fields act like a funnel to guide fast electrons from space down into the atmosphere, causing it to shimmer in a manner similar to Earth’s aurora.

This influence of localised magnetic fields is a unique feature of the Red Planet as Mars, unlike Earth, does not have a global magnetic field generated by the planet’s core.

The most sensitive ultraviolet instrument yet to orbit Mars, EMUS is able to image these dynamic auroral events globally at high resolution and across a wide range of wavelengths, providing an unprecedented window upon the interaction of the atmosphere with solar particles.

While previous studies had theorised the discrete aurora is tied to Mars’ magnetic fields and existing observations had been consistent with that theory, prior images of this phenomenon at this quality had only been available as artist’s impressions.