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

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 11 May 2015 13:44:16 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201505112044.t4BKiGBJ022802_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

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
Received on Mon 11 May 2015 04:44:16 PM PDT