The Red Planet, of all places, saves its sunsets for blue.
At first glance, it looks like a scene from a sci-fi movie: the Sun sinks behind a distant ridge, surrounded by a ring of cool blue light.
This sunset on Mars was captured by the Curiosity rover. Fine dust in the Martian atmosphere concentrates blue light near the Sun, creating a scene very different from the familiar orange-red glow of our sunsets.
If you could choose just one: would you watch the sunset on a beach on Earth, or go to Mars to wait for this ring of blue light?
Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Texas A&M Univ., April 15, 2015, Gale Crater. The four photos span 6 minutes and 51 seconds; here they’ve been assembled into an 8-second sequence. Calibrated and white-balanced; this is not continuous real-time footage.
At first glance, it looks like a scene from a sci-fi movie: the Sun sinks behind a distant ridge, surrounded by a ring of cool blue light.
This sunset on Mars was captured by the Curiosity rover. Fine dust in the Martian atmosphere concentrates blue light near the Sun, creating a scene very different from the familiar orange-red glow of our sunsets.
If you could choose just one: would you watch the sunset on a beach on Earth, or go to Mars to wait for this ring of blue light?
Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Texas A&M Univ., April 15, 2015, Gale Crater. The four photos span 6 minutes and 51 seconds; here they’ve been assembled into an 8-second sequence. Calibrated and white-balanced; this is not continuous real-time footage.