Quick & curious · Space

On Mars, the sky around the setting sun glows blue.

A pale, bluish glowing sun above dark hills on the Martian horizon
Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS · Public domain · Original

The story behind it

On Mars, the sky around the setting sun glows blue.

Curiosity photographed it on 15 April 2015 in Gale Crater. The fine dust lets blue light through better, so the blue stays close to the sun; yellow and red scatter more widely. On Earth, by contrast, the air scatters the blue out, leaving orange and red.

Sources

Every statement in this discovery is backed by one of these sources and was checked before publication.

  1. NASA Science Photojournal: Sunset in Mars' Gale Crater (PIA19400) (accessed 2026-10-07)
  2. Wikipedia: Sunset (accessed 2026-10-07)