At the end of another long day examining rocks on Mars, Curiosity stopped for a moment to watch the sun go down — the first time in 956 sunsets that the rover has watched it in color.


The four images, taken over the course of six minutes and 51 seconds, were captured with the left-eye image of Curiosity’s Mast Camera — different from the Hand Lens Imager that the rover uses to snap selfies from time to time.

The sunset images were color-calibrated, so this is more or less what a Martian sunset would look like to human eyes. The blue tint in the air is thanks to particles in Mars’s atmostphere, which permit blue light to penetrate the atmosphere better than longer wavelengths.


Why are Martian sunsets blue? The sunset pictured here may look strange to you and me, but on Mars it's a rather common sight. A… Read more