[meteorite-list] NASA's Curiosity Rover Views Serene Sundown on Mars

[Ron Baalke]

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4581

NASA's Curiosity Rover Views Serene Sundown on Mars
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
May 8, 2015

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 at jpl.nasa.gov 

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

2015-161