The canals of Mars may be a 19th Century myth, but the snow is for real.

Physicists studying data from the Mars Phoenix Lander that landed in the planet's arctic zone last year say water ice crystals were detected during the final days of the mission.

The water is stored in high thin clouds in Mars' atmosphere, similar to cirrus clouds on Earth, according to James Whiteway, an atmosphere physicist at York University in Toronto and the lead scientist on the study.

The snowfall was described being similar to ice crystals, referred to as "diamond dust," that falls in the arctic region of Earth during the depths of winter.

The precipitation is not even enough to roll into a snow Martian. Photographs sent back by the Phoenix lander showed a thin film of ice covering the ground around the probe. Phoenix detected snowfall by projecting laser beams into the clouds.

"If you melted it all in a pan [you] would be barely wetting the surface," Peter Smith, the principal investigator for the Phoenix mission and a scientist at the University of Arizona, Tucson, told the National Geographic. "Mars is awfully dry. That's why it's surprising that you see snowfall."

The discovery puts Mars into the same elite category as Earth as the only planets in our solar system with confirmed sources of water.

The Phoenix landed in the northern polar regions of Mars in May 2008. Mission engineers last received a signal on Nov. 2, when the deepening cold caused the batteries to lose power.