The eerily beautiful blue sunset on Mars (Photo : YouTube)
Nowhere on Earth can you witness a stunningly beautiful blue sunset. For that, you'll have to journey to the Red Planet, Mars.
A photo and video of an eerie yet soothing blue sunset on Mars just released by NASA has gone viral on Twitter, being re-tweeted more than 9,700 times and liked by more than 10,000 tweeters. And with good reason.
It's absolutely out of this world.
This magnificent photo shows an unusual blue sunset as the Sun slowly sinks behind a mountain range amid an enveloping blue haze. NASA's Curiosity Mars rover recorded this fantastic image at the close of the mission's 956th Martian day (or sol) on April 15, 2015 from the rover's location in Gale Crater, said ABC News.
"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, a member of Curiosity's science team.
"When the blue light scatters off the dust, it stays closer to the direction of the sun than light of other colors does," he said. "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."
The image was shared on the Curiosity's Twitter account along with the caption: "Let us go then, you and I When the evening is spread out against the sky: Blue sunset on Mars." The phrase was a quote from American poet T.S Eliot's famous work, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
The picture immediately went viral on Twitter. NASA also released a video of the blue sunset you can view here.
NASA said the imaging was done between dust storms, but some dust remained suspended high in the atmosphere. The sunset observations help researchers assess the vertical distribution of dust in the atmosphere.
Curiosity, a six-wheeled robot, has been exploring, filming and photographing the surface and the skies above Mars since August 2012.
