Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Blue Sunset

 Summary: Sunsets on the Red Planet are actually blue!

Why it's a Mind Blow: Blue Sunset: It sounds like an unreleased Bogart/Bacall film or the house martini at some swanky Manhattan bistro. (There's no point here, that's just what it sounds like.)

So it occurs to me that the last couple mind-blows have been a little heady. That's all well and good, but today I thought we should just take a step back and marvel at something truly beautiful and amazing. This image of the Martian sunset, taken by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit on May 19, 2005, reveals a distinctly blue hue.

It all has something to do with dust particles and wave-lengths and such. The science is actually pretty interesting, and it could even be applied to help us determine the atmospheric content of distant planets. You can read the article if you like but for now, I hope you'll really take a moment to digest what we're looking at. A sunset, on an alien world, unimaginably far from our own fragile home. We've traveled there. Our inventions have given us eyes to watch the sun pierce a new horizon. For thousands of years, the whole of the history of our species, this image existed only in our dreams and now, we are alive to witness it for real.

Magnificent!

Sources:

http://io9.com/5717358/why-martian-sunsets-are-blue


 http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_347.html

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