Just earlier this week, NASA’s MAVEN probe observed two mysterious phenomena on Mars.

In its examination of the planet’s thin atmosphere, the probe captured images of a high altitude dust cloud and an aurora deep in the Martian atmosphere.

The discoveries have captivated the field of planetary science, as their origins are beyond the current understanding of Mars’s atmospheric processes.

MAVEN, an acronym that stands for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution and intentionally harkens to the English word for an expert in a field who seeks to bestow knowledge onto others, was launched in the fall of 2013 and reached Mars’s orbit in September 2014.