The European Space Agency and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope recently captured an awe inspiring image of Mars revealing its clouds and craters including its polar ice caps. 

This new photo was taken on May 12, where Mars was just at a relatively close distance of 50 million miles from the Earth. This means that Mars is almost transitioning to its opposition phase, when the sun and the Earth is directly in between of the Red Planet, come May 22, Sunday.

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According to European Space Agency officials, this Mars opposition is also a cosmic event when the Red Planet is at its nearest point to Earth during its orbit, which would mean that Mars is also observed to be bigger and brighter in the sky than normal.

Astronomers take advantage of this event by using space telescopes and ground observatories to capture more details and features on the surface of Mars. The actual dates of the closest approach of Mars and Earth and their opposition do not need to match exactly.

This year's closest approach will occur on May 30 where Mars and Earth will be only separated by 46.8 million miles from each other. Martian oppositions usually occur at an average period of 780 days where the last time that the sun, the Earth and Mars are all lined up in their orbits was April 2014. However, there are still more closer approaches than the others, where Mars was at the closest to Earth in 2003 at a distance of 34.65 million miles, where astronomers say that this has been the closest point between Earth and Mars in 60,000 years.

In this new image captured by Hubble, taken by its Wide Field Camera 3 instrument, Mars is shown in a natural color view, where many of its geological features are visible, such as mountains, canyons, plains and craters.

ESA officials say that the orange region in the equatorial region is known as Arabia Terra which is a vast upland area. This unique landscape is seen to be heavily cratered from ancient impacts where erosion and weathering are evident, suggesting that these might be the oldest features of the dusty world.

The Arabia Terra spans across the eastern to the western regions of the equator where long, dark features are seen on its south, known as Sinus Sabaeus in the east and Sinus Meridiani in the west. These are caused by ancient lava flows forming this dark bedrock across the equatorial region along with other volcanic features.

There are clouds that seem to form a blanket across these dark volcanic plains of Syrtis Major. On the right face of Mars there is also a sprawling ice cap in the southern polar region compared to the smaller northern polar region since it is summer season on Mars. 

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990 which was placed into orbit by NASA's space shuttle Discovery. In 1993, astronauts repaired its mirror during a spacewalk which has been making tremendous scientific discoveries ever since. NASA officials say that Hubble will still be operating until at least 2020.

TagsHubble Space Telescope, hubbe, Mars, hubble mars, image mars hubble