NASA has released the first pictures of the Mars' blue sunset. The sunset at the red planet Mars takes place in the exactly opposite shades of Earth's sunset due to reflection of light through very fine dust particles.
This was the very first time that such clear images of the sunset at Mars are taken from any rover craft. NASA released the pictures, taken from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on April 15, in the form of an overlapped image continuation, which gives the Mars' sunset occurrence look like it is the setting moon and not the hot and yellow Sun, according to The Frisky.
The red fierce colors of Earth's sunset are replaced with cool blue hues of the Mars' sunset, which characterizes the transition between day and night on that planet, according to News Week.
The sky at Mars is most tinged with the color blue at the time of sunset as it passes through a longer path in the evening than it does in the middle day.
According to Texas A&M University's researcher Mark Lemmon. the drastic change in the colors is due to the fact that very fine dust particles. They make the blue light to penetrate through the atmosphere in a more efficient manner. They make it more probable for the blue color to be reflected back while the sunset is taking place.
Lemmon further explained that when the blue light gets scattered through dust particles, it tries to stay closer to the Sun's direction than the other colors present in light. Earth experiences a yellow and orange sunset because these colors get scattered all over the Earth's sky instead of going towards the Sun.