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This is what sunset looks like on Mars
May 10, 2015
The Curiosity rover's high-resolution camera has returned pictures of a dusty sunset on the Red
Planet
The Curiosity rover has been sending back data and photos since it landed on Mars nearly three years ago. Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of rocks in those images.
But finally, for the first time, on Curiosity's 956th solar Mars day -- April 15, 2015, to all you Earthlings out there -- its Mastcam high-resolution, colour camera captured the setting sun on the Red Planet. (A solar Mars day, or sol, by the way, lasts just over 24 hours and 39 minutes.)
Sunset on Mars, in all its hazy glory. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Damia Bouic. Used with permission of Damia Bouic. Mars' sunset of cool blues looks starkly different from our warm-hued equivalent. This is because of the thinner Martian atmosphere and the dust in it. The images of the sunset were taken in between dust storms, but with plenty of dust still in the air. This allowed researchers to analyse the vertical distribution of dust in the Martian atmosphere.
"The colours come from the fact that the very fine dust is the right size so that blue light penetrates the atmosphere slightly more efficiently," Curiosity science team member Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, who planned the observations, said Thursday in a statement from NASA.
"When the blue light scatters off the dust, it stays closer to the direction of the sun than light of other colours does. The rest of the sky is yellow to orange, as yellow and red light scatter all over the sky instead of being absorbed or staying close to the sun."
That's the opposite of Earth sunsets, where the sky grows red and yellow as the sun dips into the horizon, with the rest remaining blue.
Please read more from here
This is what sunset looks like on Mars - CNET
May 10, 2015
The Curiosity rover's high-resolution camera has returned pictures of a dusty sunset on the Red
Planet
The Curiosity rover has been sending back data and photos since it landed on Mars nearly three years ago. Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of rocks in those images.
But finally, for the first time, on Curiosity's 956th solar Mars day -- April 15, 2015, to all you Earthlings out there -- its Mastcam high-resolution, colour camera captured the setting sun on the Red Planet. (A solar Mars day, or sol, by the way, lasts just over 24 hours and 39 minutes.)
"The colours come from the fact that the very fine dust is the right size so that blue light penetrates the atmosphere slightly more efficiently," Curiosity science team member Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, who planned the observations, said Thursday in a statement from NASA.
"When the blue light scatters off the dust, it stays closer to the direction of the sun than light of other colours does. The rest of the sky is yellow to orange, as yellow and red light scatter all over the sky instead of being absorbed or staying close to the sun."
That's the opposite of Earth sunsets, where the sky grows red and yellow as the sun dips into the horizon, with the rest remaining blue.
Please read more from here
This is what sunset looks like on Mars - CNET
