Rover captures dusty sunset in blue Martian sky
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Rover Opportunity woke up in the martian afternoon to watch the sunset.
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PASADENA, California (AP) -- The Opportunity rover turned its panoramic gaze to the Martian horizon and captured a dusty blue sunset.
The six-wheeled robot snapped photographs not for the sake of beauty, but because scientists want to learn about the properties of dust in the red planet's atmosphere.
"It's pretty cool," astronomer Jim Bell said Thursday at NASA's Jet Propulsion Library as he released a movie created from pictures taken about three minutes apart in mid-February. They were culled from 11,000 images generated so far in the double-rover mission.
A rapid dimming of the sun at the horizon was caused by dust, as smog might do on Earth.
"Those of you who live in Los Angeles are very familiar with this effect," said Bell, lead scientist for the rover panoramic camera. "What's happening is the sun is sort of setting into the murky, dusty atmosphere of Mars."
The area of Martian sky around the sun is also significantly bluer, he said. "The dust scatters light in all directions but it scatters light forward much better in blue light than in red light. So there's this halo of blue around the sun all the time on Mars," he said.
Opportunity found twice as much dust in the atmosphere as was seen by NASA's Pathfinder spacecraft at another location on Mars in 1997. Pathfinder and two Viking spacecraft that landed in the 1970s also took sunset pictures.
Opportunity also was ordered to reduce its daily communications and take more powered-down "naps" to conserve electricity. Less sunlight is reaching the solar panels as Mars heads into its winter season.
Next week, the rover team will attempt something that's never been done: photographing an eclipse from the surface of another planet, Bell said. A rover camera will attempt to record the passages of the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos across the face of the sun.
Meanwhile on the other side of the planet, the twin rover Spirit was told to attempt to photograph dust devils spinning across the Martian surface. The rover also will take a closer look in coming days at a rock dubbed "Humphrey."
Copyright 2004 The
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