FRANCE: Curiosity, which landed on Mars on August 6, 2012, has been busy for approaching three years now. Every “sol” — the solar Mars day, lasting just over 24 hours, 39 minutes — the rover sends back information about its activities. This includes photos it has taken with its powerful Mastcam, its high-resolution colour camera.
Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of rocks in those images. But finally, for the first time, on sol 956 (April 15, 2015 to all you Earthlings out there) Curiosity’s Mastcam captured the setting sun on the Red Planet.
And it looks starkly different to our warm-hued terrestrial sunsets, washed in a gorgeous range of cool blues. 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 while plenty of dust still remained 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,” said Curiosity science team member Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, College Station, who planned the observations.
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