HARROW: In a footage shared on vine, NASA showed images of the beautiful sun setting amidst a dark dusty blue sky on the Red Planet taken by its Opportunity rover.
The rover has driven more than 25 miles on the surface of Mars.
Being more than 140 million miles from the sun, this stunning blue sunset happens on Mars because the red dust in its atmosphere filters out red light.
“The blue colour comes from the way Mars’ dust scatters light. The blue light is scattered less, and so it stays near the sun in the sky, while red and green are all over the sky,” said Mark Lemmon, an associate professor of planetary sciences at Texas A&M University, in a university state mtn.
As the sun is closer to the Martian horizon, its light must travel through more dust than it does during the day, when the sun is directly overhead.
This is why almost all the red light is filtered out, leaving the sky with a dark bluish appearance.
And for those like me, wondering if we will ever see a blue sunset on Earth, NASA says it sometimes occurs after volcanic eruptions that scatter dust high into Earth’s atmosphere.
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