The last glow
unsets on Mars are amazingly atmospheric. This is shown in a photo taken by NASA's Curiosity rover earlier this year on the Red Planet. As the sun set behind the horizon, its light rays illuminated a cloud bank.
Curiosity captured the scene during a special twilight exploration. While most Martian clouds hover no higher than 60 kilometers above the ground and are made of water ice, the clouds in the latest images appear to be at a higher altitude. It is particularly cold there. This suggests that these clouds are made of carbon dioxide ice.
As on Earth, clouds provide scientists with complex information for understanding the weather. By studying when and where clouds form, researchers are learning more about the composition and temperatures of the Martian atmosphere, as well as wind movements.
Curiosity captured both the sun's rays and the iridescent clouds as panoramic images. These panoramas consist of 28 images each and were assembled on Earth.
Welcome to Photonworld – a platform for knowledge, interesting facts and science on the topic of light. Photonworld aims to provide a basic understanding of the physics of light and its countless phenomena. From medicine, to art and physics: all topics are covered.
Photonworld originated as an initiative of the excellence cluster the Munich-Centre for Advanced Photonics (MAP) and the Laboratory for Attosecond Physics (LAP) at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ).
The initiator of the project is Prof. Dr. Ferenc Krausz, Chair of Experimental Physics at the LMU and Director of the MPQ.
Photonworld’s Student Zone reports directly out of the PhotonLab, which is supported by the Munich Center for Quantum Science and Technology (MCQST) and the DFG Research Unit FOR 2783. At the PhotonLab, schoolteachers and students can find up-to-date information about experiments and goings-on at the lab, and plan their own visit to the laboratory.
