NASA Curiosity Captures Mars' Spectacular Blue Sunset

NASA's Curiosity rover has captured a spectacular new image of a sunset on Mars. The kicker is that this sunset isn't red or gold; it's blue.

The rover used its Mast Camera (Mastcam) to record the sunset during the evening of April 15, 2015. The imaging itself was done between dust storms. However, some dust remained suspended high in the atmosphere; this, in turn, gave researchers that ability to assess the distribution of dust in the atmosphere.

"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," said Mark Lemmon, one of the researchers, in a news release. "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."

Martian sunsets actually make the blue near the sun's part of the sky more prominent. In contrast, normal daylight makes the rusty color of the dust more prominent.

In this case the image isn't just a pretty picture, though. There's also the fact that scientists can use it in order to better understand Mars' atmosphere.

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