Nobody would argue that the sunset is one of the most spectacular natural events we can ever experience on Earth, but all the talk about Mars has made some people wonder what that experience would be like on the Red Planet!

Well, NASA’s Curiosity Rover may be able to provide some insight into this. While roaming the planet’s surface, the Mars Curiosity rover has been snapping up photos of various parts of the planet and the atmosphere. It has been roving around since 2012 but this is only the first time that the probe has been able to capture these images. And while the spacecraft only shot back four pictures, they may be the most important seven minutes ever captured in photos in recent history.

Curiosity science-team member Mark Lemmon explains, “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…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.”

But this is not the end of the line for the Mars Curiosity rover. The craft continues to roam the foothills around its most recent destination, which is still Mt. Sharp. Mt. Sharp is only about 3.5 miles high but has many rocky layers that provide a detailed look into the history of Mars and, more importantly, how the red planet has changed throughout history; and especially how it may have shifted from a relatively warm and wet planet to the cold, dry, desert that we know it as today.

Source: http://www.piercepioneer.com/mars-curiosity-rover-snaps-first-pictures-of-sunset-on-mars/40672