Winding down on its 956th sol (Martian day), NASA's Curiosity rover took in the sunset and delivered a sequence of images to Earth so we could see it too.
Released Friday, NASA's animation consists of four images that show the sun setting on a hazy, dark blue Martian horizon. The passage of time in the animation is just shy of seven minutes.
Curiosity snapped the photos on April 15 and used its Mast Camera.
Mark Lemmon, a Texas A&M University researcher and Curiosity team member, set up the sunset observation and explained the image's blue look.
"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," he said in a statement. "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."
Curiosity landed in Mars' Gale Crater in Aug. 2012 and reached its ultimate science destination, Mount Sharp, a little more than two years later. During its mission, Curiosity has uncovered a trove of evidence suggesting Mars was once mostly covered by a massive ocean and could have hosted microbial life.
