Sunrises and sunsets cannot only be observed from Earth. But on Mars there is a completely different play of colors.
There is something fascinating about sunsets. When the sun disappears in the evening and bathes the sky in a warm play of yellow, orange and red tones, it often attracts the gaze of entire beach promenades. On probably every cell phone there should be at least one photo of a sunset in the photo gallery – of course, never as beautiful as in real life.
Another house number is the sunsets on Mars *. On the red planet, the sun’s daily farewell visually has nothing to do with the glowing ball of fire as we can observe it on earth. There it is bluish and is more reminiscent of the light of a car that comes towards you in a winter-white environment with high beam – cold and clear. Several NASA rovers have already captured him in photos, such as “Spirit”, which the authorities said goodbye in 2011. In addition, the sun appears about two thirds smaller than we see it on earth. This is because Mars is farther from the Sun than Earth.
Sunset on Mars: Blue twilight
But if Mars is already considered the red planet, why are blue tones not visible at sunsets? According to NASA *, fine dust is responsible for this. “These colors come from the fact that the very fine dust is the right size, that the blue light penetrates the atmosphere a little more efficiently,” says Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University. He’s part of the research team for the Nasa Curiosity rover, which recently made an amazing find. “When the blue light is scattered by the dust, it stays closer to the direction of the sun than the light of other colors. The rest of the sky is yellow to orange as yellow and red light scatters all over the sky instead of being absorbed or staying close to the sun. “
It is the other way around on earth, where the atmosphere lets the red light through rather than the blue. Nasa does not make the recordings of the sunsets purely for pleasure, but wants to determine in this way how high the dust of Mars rises into the atmosphere and look for dust or ice clouds there. (ial) * fr.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA.
