That blue sunset on Mars...

[Church]

The cynical part of me wonders... Is that even the sun? Could it possibly be something else?



This is the only timelapse I could find, but in this sequence of images you see that one frame which shows what clearly is not a perfect circle. I find that interesting, because on Earth I don't believe the sun ever looks that way to us. We see certain effects from atmospheric lensing, but this one is a bit strange to me.

Anyone care to weigh in on what might cause that strange shape instead of the circle that appears in the following frames?

[Dreamtimer]

I'd like to see more shots when the light is very bright.

[Olaf]

I remember that images of the mars rover which are showing the color calibration plates (Sundial) showed wrong colors (red and blue were interchanged). From that someone concluded, that NASA is interchanging the red and blue color channels of the Mars images, to give them an overall red toning.

Vice versa that will lead to a blue sunset image, when it is infact red.



One of many discussions: www.thelivingmoon.com/43ancients/02files/Mars_Blue_Bird_Color_01.html

[Church]

Well the color thing I can get behind, because there are easy ways to explain how hues can be changed based on many different conditions... but I'm interested in the the fact that the shape of the sun is not a perfect sphere. Here is the first frame of the above gif:



Does the sun ever appear that way on Earth? What would cause that abnormality at the bottom of the sphere? It reminds me of the shape of a helium-filled party balloon... or maybe a light bulb.

[Bob]

Possibly this would be of assistance?



they call it a mirage image, or mock mirage image:

In order for a mock mirage to appear, the cooler air needs to be trapped below the inversion.

Possibly then there were different temperature atmospheric layers - as the rays passed through, the recorded image showed the apparent shape change?

[Church]

That's a good explanation... good call there.. But now I'm left wondering about how it's only the first frame that does that, and not the remaining ones. Shouldn't that mirage effect continue onward through the actual setting of the sun? As someone who lives in a place where there is a large body of water to the west of me, it's a common thing to watch a sunset around here, and I've seen thousands of them... yet whenever there is that oblong stretching effect you depicted there, it doesn't correct itself after the effect has started. So it's just weird to me... Could temperature stratification really cause that, like you are positing there?

I admit I don't know enough about meteorology to accurately explain it, if it is indeed a temperature stratification effect.

[Bob]

Possibly it tells something about what 'atmosphere' is present on Mars? I've seen some sunsets in Hawaii over the Pacific ocean, and the mirage elongation seems to be longer in duration, than that brief blip in the Mars blue sunset. I'd sure love to see a good spectrograph to see what chemicals/gases are present.. like why at that altitude only where the blip happened.. Good catch on the blip btw !

[bsbray]

I remember that images of the mars rover which are showing the color calibration plates (Sundial) showed wrong colors (red and blue were interchanged). From that someone concluded, that NASA is interchanging the color channels of the Mars images, to give them an overall red toning.
Vice versa that will lead to a blue sunset image, when it is infact red.

I remember Richard Hoagland talking on Coast to Coast AM once about how the first satellite imagery taken of the surface of Mars was done without any photo-receptors for the color green. NASA seems to manipulate the actual appearance of Mars in their surface images, I'm guessing because they want it to look more alien than it actually is.