There is a lot going on in space, and although most planets experience many of the same events, they have different outcomes, even sunsets. As the Sun disappears below the horizon, it fills Earth’s sky with bright, warm colors. As for Mars, the opposite occurs, as it has just been discovered that the Red Planet doesn’t have a bright, colorful sunset like people may have expected.
One of NASA’s Mars Rovers, Curiosity, caught images as the sun set on Mars. Many may have expected a similar appearance on Mars as on Earth, but the images showed something much darker: a sunset full of blue hues.
What causes the blue sunset on Mars?
In a statement, a member of Curiosity’s science team, Mark Lemmon, explained why the sunset on Mars was blue in the images captured by the rover. Lemmon stated that the blue atmosphere was occurring because “the very fine dust is the right size so that blue light penetrates the atmosphere slightly more efficiently. ”
He went on to say, “When the blue light scatters off the dust, it stays closer to the direction of the sun than light of other colors 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.”
Mars Rover Explains Sunset on Earth
On Earth, a traveling beam of sunlight is white. Colors are scattered by air molecules and airborne particles, which changes the colors that people see. Blues and greens have a shorter wavelength and scatter more, so they are removed from the beam of light and rarely seen. Oranges and reds appear due to the removal of the greens and blues. Sunset is usually brighter than sunrise because of the amount of particles in the air that scatter the colors. Curiosity has been on Mars for almost three years now. It first got to work studying the terrain and environment of the Red Planet in August 2012. Curiosity sends data back to Earth once a Martian day is complete, which is 24 hours, 39 minutes. Who knows what else it will capture and send back before it returns to Earth.
