Sun Rays Filtering Through Rare Martian Clouds Captured in a Photographic First

 Sun Rays Filtering Through Rare Martian Clouds Captured in a Photographic First

NASA's Curiosity rover snapped the first clear picture of Sun rays on Mars, which looks like a ghostly white-tinged sunset.

The rover took the ethereal photo on February 2, as the Sun set behind a group of twilight clouds. These clouds hang at an unusually high altitude, which suggests they are probably made of carbon dioxide ice – also known as dry ice.

NASA released the eerie image on Monday.

The Sun's rays shine through the alien clouds, illuminating them with muted hues of green and pink.

Curiosity also captured a feather-shaped iridescent cloud hanging over Mars that appears to glow pink, green, and blue, in the image below.

 

"Where we see iridescence, it means a cloud's particle sizes are identical to their neighbors in each part of the cloud," atmospheric scientist Mark Lemmon said in the release.

"By looking at color transitions, we're seeing particle size changing across the cloud. That tells us about how the cloud is evolving and how its particles change size over time."

Both brilliant pictures were assembled from a series of 28 images that the rover sent back to Earth, and they were edited to "emphasize the highlights," according to NASA.

The sunset portraits expand on a survey the Curiosity rover conducted in 2021, where it watched pearly, shining twilight clouds pass overhead.

 

The new survey relies more on Curiosity's color camera. The observations began in January and run until mid-March, so Curiosity should send NASA scientists lots of new information about these spectacular clouds.

Clouds are rare on Mars since there isn't much water in the planet's atmosphere. Martian air has just one percent the density of Earth's atmosphere.

When clouds appear, it's mostly around the Martian equator during the coldest part of its year, when the planet's orbit takes it furthest from the Sun.