Great Image: Dust Devils on Mars

While all attention is on Ceres, let's not forget another water-bearing planet between ourselves and Ceres. The image above demonstrates the nature of the dry and denuded surface of Mars, while the water Itself lies deeper below the surface.

Here is the story from NASA: 

It was late in the northern martian spring when the HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spied this local denizen. Tracking across the flat, dust-covered Amazonis Planitia in 2012, the core of this whirling dust devil is about 140 meters in diameter. Lofting dust into the thin martian atmosphere, its plume reaches about 20 kilometers above the surface. Common to this region of Mars, dust devils occur as the surface is heated by the Sun, generating warm, rising air currents that begin to rotate. Tangential wind speeds of up to 110 kilometers per hour are reported for dust devils in other HiRISE images.

NASA recently reported that about 4.3 billion years ago Mars had enough water to cover its surface in water that was 450 feet deep. It is believed the water formed an ocean in the planet's northern hemisphere, being more than a mile deep in some areas (see image below).  Most of this water later later escaped into space. 

Image Credit Above: HiRISE, MRO, LPL (U. Arizona), NASA
Image Credit Below:  NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center