Fwd: Curiosity sees blue on the red planet

Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: May 12, 2015 at 8:17:06 PM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Curiosity sees blue on the red planet

 

 

 

May 8, 2015

NASA's Curiosity Rover Views Serene Sundown on Mars

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover recorded this view of the sun setting at the close of the mission's 956th Martian day, or sol (April 15, 2015), from the rover's location in Gale Crater. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Texas A&M Univ.
› Full image and caption

The sun dips to a Martian horizon in a blue-tinged sky in images sent home to Earth this week from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover.

A series of images is combined into an animation at:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=pia19401

For a single-frame scenic view, see:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=pia19400

Curiosity used its Mast Camera (Mastcam) to record the sunset during an evening of skywatching on April 15, 2015.

The imaging was done between dust storms, but some dust remained suspended high in the atmosphere. The sunset observations help researchers assess the vertical distribution of dust in the atmosphere.

"The colors come from the fact that the very fine dust is the right size so that blue light penetrates the atmosphere slightly more efficiently," said Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, College Station, the Curiosity science-team member who planned the observations. "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."

Just as colors are made more dramatic in sunsets on Earth, Martian sunsets make the blue near the sun's part of the sky much more prominent, while normal daylight makes the rusty color of the dust more prominent.

Since its August 2012 landing inside Mars' Gale Crater, Curiosity has been studying the planet's ancient and modern environments.

Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, built and operates Curiosity's Mastcam. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, built the rover and manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. For more information about Curiosity, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/msl

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl

You can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at:

http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity

http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity

 

Media Contact

Guy Webster
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-6278
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

2015-161  

 

---

 

Curiosity rover sees blue on the red planet

May 11, 2015 by Stephen Clark

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover recorded this view of the sun setting at the close of the mission's 956th Martian day, or sol (April 15, 2015), from the rover's location in Gale Crater. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Texas A&M University

NASA's Curiosity rover has returned a stunning image of the sun dipping behind a distant ridge from a vista inside Mars's Gale Crater, only the Martian sunset spectacle appears blue instead of the reddish hues seen at dusk on Earth.

A color camera mounted on the rover's mast captured the image April 15 after a dust storm swept over Curiosity's operations site near the Martian equator.

Dust in the Martian atmosphere makes the sunset appear blue, similar to the way particles in Earth's atmosphere cause orange glows at dawn and dusk, according to Mark Lemmon, a member of Curiosity's science team based at Texas A&M University.

"The colors come from the fact that the very fine dust is the right size so that blue light penetrates the atmosphere slightly more efficiently," Lemmon said in a press release issued by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the Curiosity mission. "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."

The six-wheeled Curiosity rover landed on Mars in August 2012 and is exploring the foothills of a three-mile-high mountain named Mount Sharp lying at the center of Gale Crater, an ancient impact basin. Curiosity is climbing higher on Mount Sharp with plans to stop as the robot reaches new layers of rock that could hold clues on how Mars evolved billions of years ago, when the planet was warmer, wetter, and harbored the ingredients for life.

© 2015 Spaceflight Now Inc.

 

---

Watch the sun set against a deep-blue Martian sky

By Karen Kaplan contact the reporter

The Red Planet has blue sunsets.

At least, that's how it looked to the Curiosity rover as its Mast Camera was pointed toward the Martian horizon one evening last month.

One of the Mastcam's two imaging systems experiences colors very much like a human would if she were standing on the surface of Mars — except that the Earthling would be even more sensitive to blue wavelengths of light.

Those blue wavelengths tend to dominate in the part of the Martian sky that is close to the sun. That's because the relatively shorter wavelengths are able to sneak through the dusty Mars atmosphere more efficiently than the longer wavelengths toward the red end of the spectrum of visible light. The effect is magnified at sunset, when light must travel through a thicker slice of atmosphere than it does in the middle of the day, when the sun is overhead. (If you're having trouble visualizing this, check out this diagram from EarthSky.org.) The same geometry causes sunsets on Earth to look red.

Curiosity has sent back thousands of pictures from the surface of Mars. Usually, both the ground and the sky have reddish-brown hues. The pictures taken April 15 represent Curiosity's first attempt to capture color images of a Martian sunset, according to NASA.

The rover witnessed this particular sunset at the end of its 956th Martian day. The pictures were taken from Gale Crater over a period of 6 minutes and 51 seconds. The images were color-calibrated before being released to the public, but NASA says the blue sky is the real deal. 

Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles Times 

---