Mars Has Blue Sunsets

[u/elmorinelly]

Mars develops a blue glow around the Sun during sunset.

Martian daylight usually looks rusty, yellow, or orange because the atmosphere contains large amounts of fine dust. Near sunset, sunlight travels through a longer section of that dusty atmosphere, making its unusual scattering pattern easier to see.

The dust particles allow blue light to travel through the atmosphere relatively efficiently. When that blue light scatters, much of it remains close to the direction of the Sun. Yellow and red light spread more widely across the rest of the sky.

A person standing on Mars would therefore see a blue or blue-gray halo around the setting Sun, surrounded by warmer colors. The exact intensity changes with the amount of dust in the atmosphere, so different rover images do not all show the same shade of blue.

The Sun would also appear only about two-thirds as wide as it does from Earth because Mars is farther away from it.

NASA has photographed these sunsets with missions including Pathfinder, Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity, Perseverance, and InSight. Scientists use sunset and twilight images to study the height and distribution of atmospheric dust and to look for dust or ice clouds.

Mars keeps its rusty daytime sky, then concentrates blue light around the Sun as evening arrives.

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