Astronomy Video - NASA Space Program: Sunset On Mars From Spirit Rover [Holst - The Planets Suite]

http://littlefish.com.au Great photos of the setting sun made into a short video. Spirit Rover was "dust storm" checking! The sinking sun in a dusty evening sky, August 2009. Lack of sunshine is death for a solar powered rover! Curiosity Rover launch [Mars Science Laboratory] is coming soon. Opportunity Rover has amazing "survival skills" or I should say it's the smart team headed by Steve Squyres at NASA / JPL. Mars Rovers a great value planetary mission. Hopefully, Opportunity will overlap Curiosity mission as Curiosity landing is only about 7 months away.

Chose Gustav Holst's The Planet Suite -- Mars. It's great classical music -- but quite well known music [being dramatic music].

Old Notes: How exciting to see a sunset on another world the day after it has happened! The pics that make up this movie were taken by Spirit, one of the two NASA Mars Rovers, on the evening of 21st August 2009 from near a place called Home Plate in Gusev Crater. Real time frame for the start to end of the video is about 18 minutes. Spirit has been spending the last 5 years or so of its '90 day' (great value for money!!!) mission travelling around this crater.

My friend Gaby - the ace film-maker - said I should post this!

A sol is a Mars day and is about 24 1/2 Earth hours.

To find Gusev go to Google Earth and click on the ringed planet (looks like Saturn) next to the right of the sun symbol on the top bar. Click the drop down arrow. Click Mars. Type Gusev into the search bar on the top left. Gusev is big - about 150 kms in diameter. It 's about 14 degrees S of the equator. Note the huge water course breaching the crater ramparts at about 5 o'clock and flowing away to the SE. It probably flowed at short intervals (geologically speaking) between about 3 to 4 billion years ago.

Spirit is located pretty well dead centre. The background hills seen in the movie are not those of Gusev. They are the walls of a smaller range of hills inside of Gusev about 15-20kms away.

The rocks in the bottom left foreground form the top of a hill near to Spirit The sky is very hazy due to the presence of regional dust storm - it is near mid summer and the dust storm season for Mars. Dust storms are very dangerous for these solar power rovers. Note how the sun disappears well before it hits the horizon.

The movie was made from black and white jpegs, 16kb each, downloaded from the Exploratorium web site where NASA downloads data from the Mars Rovers pretty well immediately after they are received by the Deep Space Network. The colours will look different according to your monitor settings and other factors. I've really pushed things on this first cut which is a work in progress. I will be updating it when I've got a bit of spare time - like getting a more true 'real' colour bluish tinge to the sun/dust as the sun disappears.

Steve Squyres/Jim Bell, of the Rover program, have pressed for real time release of info like this. Such a forward looking progressive policy is much appreciated. Thanks to them and thanks NASA. It was very exciting to see the sunset a day after it happened. Great to be able to add my little bit by processing the black and white stills into a colour movie. No doubt they will be doing a far better job than me when they have the time!

For more go to NASA or this great site - unmannedspaceflight dot com Enjoy!

Credits for pics;
1- NASA-JPL-Caltech featuring Spirit, Colette, Kim and Paolo
2- Martin Pauer-Wikimedia-NASA picturing Gusev Crater
3- NASA-JPL for the Spirit stills of the sunset

Music: Mars from the Planets Suite by Holst (couldn't resist!) Played by PCO of John Hopkins University.

All is in the public domain. For conditions of use, refer to those credited.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• On
• Mars
• Martian
• sun
• sunset
• sunset glow
• setting sun
• sinking sun
• evening sky
• NASA
• USA
• space program
• spaceship
• space probe
• Spirit
• Opportunity
• Rover
• video
• pictures
• great photos
• Holst
• The Planets Suite
• dust storm
• unmanned spacecraft
• planetary mission
• solar system
• mission to Mars
• Soir
• coucher du solei
• système solaire
• Marte
• puesta
• del
• sol
• sistema
• Sonnenuntergang
• Einstellung
• der
• Sonne
• Sonnensystem
• マルス;
• 火
• 日没
• Марс
• закат
• Солнечной
• системы

[larski63]

Good one and great NASA makes the original photos public almost immediately. Wasn't that music from Holst's Planet Suite, the one called Mars, God Of War? Anyway fav'd.

[HughFromAlice]

@larski63

Thanks. Correct about the music. Also great that Jim Squyres and rover team he heads up have such a proactive policy of putting their data on the web asp for anyone to check out. They're a great bunch of people.

[Molhedim]

I think mars will be the second planet to habit life , becouse human race will eventualy make it hapends and bring life to that planet . About europe ...thats an awesome concept too , imagine above or underwater citys :D with marine life . What i think is ....europa has been around for sometime ...is it posible for some primitive life to apear and we dont know yet? if thats true ...it would be AMAZING!

[HughFromAlice]

@Molhedim

Would be amazing! Poor Spirit finally bit the dust (literally!) a while a go, but Opportunity is now at Sol (Martian Day) 2678, done well over 30kms (designed for 90 days + 800 meters!!) and is right on the edge of a huge crater called Endeavour where clay like minerals have been discovered from orbit. These minerals almost certainly formed in water about 3.5 billion years ago when Mars probably had a fairly thick atomosphere and water could flow. If confirmed, a pointer to life??!!

[MsPicassos]

Spielberg go to Mars.For documentary film

[HughFromAlice]

@MsPicassos

Thanks. I checked it out and it looks interesting!

[brogoanne1]

That's magic, Hugh.  Amazing what you can see via technology! Up for an Oscar, I reckon!

[takingbacktj94]

if you look to the right a little bit around 39 seconds you can its two moons phobos and demos (I hope I spelled that right lol)

[tommi59tk]

fake sky on mars is blue on sunny days not red or orange

[logitechnc]

@HughFromAlice thanks for your quick reply

[HughFromAlice]

@logitechnc

I went back to the black and white originals - they are only 12kb each!!! - to double check.

The dots just appear on that one frame & look like small glitches in data transmission from Mars to one of the Deep Space Network receiving sites or possibly hotspots pixels on the camera itself.

Also, if the sun can't shine through the dust (it sets well above the horizon), then Phobos & Deimos (Mars's moons) wouldn't have much hope of shining through.

But qood q anyway :-)

[logitechnc]

What are the two lights at 38sec bottem left hand corner?