Curiosity Rover Captures A Sunset On Mars

The Curiosity rover robot caught a clear sunset on Mars (photo: doc. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

JAKARTA - The Curiosity rover robot caught a clear sunset on Mars. This is the first time that sunlight has been seen so clearly on the planet.

According to NASA, sunsets on Mars are uniquely fickle, but Curiosity caught one last moon that stands out.

As the sun descends to the horizon on February 2, its light illuminates a cloud. These rays of the sun are also known as crepuscular rays, from the Latin word for twilight.

Curiosity captured the view during its latest twilight cloud survey which is based on observations of noctilucent clouds, or evening glow in 2021.

While most of Mars' clouds hover no more than 37 miles above the ground and are composed of water ice, the clouds in the new image appear to be at higher altitudes, where they are very cold.

Shows, these clouds are made of carbon dioxide ice, or dry ice. As on Earth, clouds provide scientists with complex but important information for understanding weather.

By looking at when and where clouds form, scientists can learn more about the composition and temperature of Mars' atmosphere, as well as the winds within it.

Cloud surveys in 2021 include more imagery by Curiosity's black-and-white navigation camera, providing a detailed look at the structure of the cloud in motion.

But the recent survey, which began last January and will be completed in mid-March, relied more frequently on the Mast Camera, or Mastcam, which helps scientists see how cloud particles grow over time.

In addition to this sunlight image, Curiosity also captured a collection of colorful clouds shaped like feathers on January 27. When illuminated by sunlight, certain types of clouds can create a rainbow-like appearance called iridescence.

"Where we see a play of color, it means that the particle size of the cloud is identical to its neighbors in each part of the cloud," said Mark Lemmon, an atmospheric scientist from the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, quoted from NASA's official website, Thursday, March 9.

“By looking at the color transitions, we see the size of the particles changing in the cloud. It tells us about how clouds evolve and how their particle size changes over time."

Curiosity captures sunlight and colorful clouds as a panorama, each of which is aggregated from 28 images sent back to Earth.