Curiosity rover captures dramatic new portrait of the Martian landscape

By Ashley Strickland, CNN

(CNN) — The Curiosity rover has captured a stunning new mosaic that reveals the dramatic, colorful hues of morning and afternoon light on the surface of Mars.

The robotic explorer used its black-and-white navigation cameras to take panoramas of the Marker Band Valley on April 8 before leaving the site. One panorama was taken at 9:20 a.m., while the other was taken at 3:40 p.m., both local Mars time.

The black-and-white panoramas captured how different the landscape looks at two different times of day, and color was added in post-processing by a team at NASA. The blue light signifies the morning, while the yellow light indicates the afternoon.

The image is similar to another postcard taken by Curiosity in November 2021.

“Anyone who’s been to a national park knows the scene looks different in the morning than it does in the afternoon,” said Curiosity engineer Doug Ellison at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in a statement. “Capturing two times of day provides dark shadows because the lighting is coming in from the left and the right, like you might have on a stage — but instead of stage lights, we’re relying on the Sun.”

Ellison, who serves as the Mars exploration team’s lead on rover cams, devised the plan for Curiosity to take the panoramas and processed the images to create the new mosaic.

Curiosity has been exploring the foothills of the 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer) Mount Sharp at the center of Gale Crater since it landed in 2012. In the image, Marker Band Valley can be seen beyond the rover’s tracks, where the robotic explorer unexpectedly discovered evidence of an ancient lake.

The shadows are more pronounced in the image because the panoramas were taken during winter at Gale Crater, when airborne dust is closer to the surface.

“Mars’ shadows get sharper and deeper when there’s low dust and softer when there’s lots of dust,” Ellison said.

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