Take a moment to enjoy these sunrise and sunset photos on Mars, brought to you by NASA’s InSight lander. The camera on its robotic arm took the images on the mission’s 145th Martian day (sol).
Let’s start with the sunrise picture, taken April 25 at 5:30 a.m. Mars local time. Below you’ll see the raw image, and the color-corrected image that more accurately depicts how the human eye would see the event.
According to NASA, “Much farther from Mars than it is from Earth, the Sun appears only about two-thirds the size that it does when viewed from Earth.”
Figure 1: The raw image of a sunrise on Mars. (Image Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Figure 2: The color-corrected image of a sunrise on Mars. (Image Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
April 25 at around 6:30 p.m. Mars local time is when InSight snapped the sunset view. Again, both the raw and color-corrected versions are available.
Check out that Mars sunset below!
Figure 3: The raw image of a sunset on Mars. (Image Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Figure 4: The color-corrected image of a sunset on Mars. (Image Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
A camera called the Instrument Context Camera (ICC), which sits underneath the lander’s deck, was also in on the action. It was able to capture some clouds sailing across the sky in raw and color-corrected formats at the time the sunset photo was taken.
Capturing Mars’ sunrise and sunset isn’t new. The lander’s camera took practice shots March 2 and 10. And these events in Mars have been capture by many landers before, including the Viking 1 lander in 1976, Viking 2 in 1978, and during the Spirit, Curiosity, and Opportunity missions.
“It’s been a tradition for Mars missions to capture sunrises and sunsets,” says Justin Maki, InSight science team co-investigator and imaging lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion. “With many of our primary imaging tasks complete, we decided to capture the sunrise and sunset as seen from another world.”
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