The beauty of sunsets can blind anyone’s eyes and soul with soothing relief and can elevate one’s mood. Even robots can’t tear their eyes from this beautiful sunset. What makes this enchanting sunset more beautiful is that fiery orange ball that is exhibiting silence and calmness.
“Sunset is still my favorite color, and the rainbow is second.”
You will be baffled to know that Mars does not have orange-yellow sunset but a blue sunset. Yes! you heard it right – the red planet has a blue sunset.
The Mars expedition has got a sudden oomph in last few years. Recently, Elon Musk has sent a car into Mars orbit and earlier ISRO Mars Orbiter Mission being the cheapest of all time space mission has caught many eyes towards Mars.
A day on Mars lasts for 24 hours and 39 minutes, so sunrise and sunset follow nearly same rhythm as of Earth. Then why is the color of sunset and sunrise different from that of the Earth?
The reason behind blue sunset on Mars
The first reason behind this phenomenon, that may be helpful for starters, is that the average distance of Mars from the sun is 141.6 million miles or about half of Earth’s size. The higher the distance, the lesser is the intensity of sunlight.
Another reason being that the Earth has a thick atmosphere. During sunrise and sunset, the sun is low in the sky. The light has to travel a long path through the atmosphere to reach the Earth. Most of the blue photons are scattered away due to less wavelength so only red reaches the Earth. So the sunset on Earth appears red and was explained by Rayleigh Scattering Principle.
But contrary to that of Earth, Mars has a thin, dry and dusty atmosphere. The phenomenon that occurs here is Mie Scattering which is vice versa to Rayleigh’s Scattering Principle. Dust particles on Mars are thicker than the air molecules on the Earth. Mie Scattering explains that larger size of the molecule scatters the high wavelength photons. That explicates the reason behind the blue sunset on Mars.
Mie Scattering occurs on the Earth but it not strong enough as Rayleigh’s Scattering so Earth cannot have a blue moon.So it can be said that sunset phenomenon is different on Mars that of the Earth because of its unique quality of atmosphere.
If life could ever be found on Mars and you could take out some time from your busy schedule then the blue sunset and pink sky on the red planet will be a treat to watch.
Read also – 5 Most Dangerous Islands Of The World
