The relative brightness of the land and sky are the same as in an actual sunset, and the increased level of detail matches what the greater dynamic range of the human eye would see. There are a couple of things that would be slightly different, though. For example, the shadows would be longer and pointing in a slightly different direction due to the change in Sun’s position from late afternoon to sunset. But overall the final composite will give you a pretty good idea of what it was like to be standing on Mars when Curiosity snapped these pictures.

Making these images wouldn’t have been possible without using the high-quality images archived in NASA’s Planetary Data System. Many of the images released here on the Planetary Society blog make use of raw frames immediately available to the public, which is nice for following along with Curiosity’s exploration of the Red Planet. However, these are low-quality JPEG images that have been highly compressed before being released to the public.

I would like to take a moment to encourage exploration enthusiasts to dig into the images archived in the PDS. These images have been calibrated to remove vignetting and lens distortion present in the raw images. They have higher bit depth, preserving more detail in shadows. They represent the full quality of the data originally returned from Mars. They’re also color-balanced so that the view more closely resembles what a human astronaut standing on Mars would see. (The raw images often have a strong greenish cast). Ultimately, they provide us with a much cleaner and more realistic view of Mars.

There are a few tools available to help find these images. The most helpful is the Curiosity Analyst’s Notebook, which provides an overview of what Curiosity was doing on any given day, along with mosaics and links to download the calibrated data. Another useful link is Michael Howard’s Midnight Planets Curiosity sol page. Although this site only archives the raw images direct from the spacecraft, I find it useful for looking at what Curiosity was doing at a glance before diving more deeply into the analyst’s notebook.

There are plenty of gems like this still packed away in the archives, and I really want to encourage everyone to go look for them. Happy hunting!