Mars' Sunset is Blue & Beautiful; Photo of NASA's Curiosity Rover Reveals Red Planet Sun

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NASA's Curiosity Mars rover captured images of what the Red Planet's sunset looked like last Friday.

The typical sunset that we know on Earth is dominantly colored with orange, red, and yellow. However, sunset on Mars is blue and beautiful. According to Newsweek, the images were captured last April 15 and it is the rover's first sunset captured in color.

"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," explains Mark Lemmon, a member of the Curiosity science-team from Texas A&M University. The image captured by NASA was from when the Curiosity rover was in the Gale Crater.

"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," he said via the NASA website.

In another entry, the space exploration website also added that the atmosphere in Mars has fine dust particles "that permit blue light to penetrate the atmosphere more efficiently than longer-wavelength colors." The Martian sky is most tinted with blue during sunset, when "light from the sun passes through a longer path in the atmosphere than it does at mid-day."

Curiosity was sent to Mars to explore the red planet. It was launched last Nov. 26, 2011 and landed on Aug. 5, 2012. NASA says its mission on Mars will last for 1 Mars year or about 23 Earth months.

In addition to the blue-tinted sunset, its notable discoveries include finding an old streambed where water once flowed indicating that Mars was habitable a few billion years ago, according to Space.com.  

Curiosity also found dangerous levels of radiation where NASA will be using the data to reinforce spacecraft and spacesuits for humans, according to Computer World. Curiosity was also the first man-made rover to ever drill a rock to collect samples and by doing so, it discovered carbon, oxygen, phosphorus, sulfur, and hydrogen - evidence that Mars could have once held life.

The rover's latest pursuit is going to Mars' Mount Sharp. According to the summary released by NASA, Curiosity is at the base of the mountain and will be trekking it.

The main mission objective now is to examine successively higher layers of Mount Sharp. Curiosity spent several months examining the lowest levels of the mountain's basal geological unit, the Murray formation, at an outcrop called "Pahrump Hills." Then it set off toward a site called "Logan Pass," where the team anticipates a first chance to place the contact-science instruments at the end of the rover's arm onto a darker geological unit overlying or within the Murray formation.