Perseverance captured an unusual sunset on Mars

Perseverance captured an unusual sunset on Mars

The discovery was made with its Mastcam-z zoom camera, the main use of which is taking panoramic images.
Recently, it was announced that the Persverance rover, the artifact that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) sent a few months ago to carry out an exploration of Mars, captured images of the sunset on that planet.

The image was achieved by using its Mastcam-z zoom camera , which is primarily intended to take panoramic images and distant targets .

What is striking is that the sunset on Mars is blue in color, as a result of fine dust in the atmosphere that is penetrated by light in a more efficient way, compared to other colors with longer wavelengths.

However, the one that caught Perseverance is duller than average. "It is easy to be in motion all the time, but it is important to look up," he posted the artifact that is on Mars on his Twitter account along with the image.

It is worth remembering that a discovery was made recently that the Perseverance rover made during its expedition on the planet Mars, using a tool on its robotic arm to scrape off an intriguing rock.

It is about what appears to be a group of granulated minerals and sediments, a content that simulates a kind of unaltered Martian time capsule, which would give clues to the way in which rocks were formed on this planet and what the weather in warmer and more humid conditions and see if it is potentially habitable.

“Looking inside to see something that no one has seen before. I chipped away a small chunk of this rock to remove the top layer and take a look underneath. Now I focus on my next goal during exploration, "Rover Perseverance posted on his official Twitter account.

In recent days, he delivered his first scientific results that confirm the interest in looking for signs of life at his landing site, a crater where there was a lake 3,000 million years ago.

Built into the mast of the NASA robot, the Supercam made it possible to observe the Jezero crater environment on the floor of the red planet and to transmit an image base by satellite.

These first high-resolution photographs confirmed what was observed from orbit.

That is, in the crater, about 35 kilometers in diameter, there was a closed lake, fed by the mouth of a river, about 3,600 or 3,000 years ago.

The study published in the journal Science , the first since the Perseverance landing, provides many details about the history of this lake, with a surface area comparable to that of Lake Geneva in Geneva (Switzerland).

The Supercam, an ultra-sophisticated camera manufactured in France, made it possible to identify sediment strata that are "very good candidates for finding signs of life in the past," explained the CNRS during the presentation to the press of the study results, carried out by one of its researchers, Nicolas Mangold.

These strata, coming from a 40-meter-high mountain named Kodiak, are "clayey or sandy sediments, where organic matter can more easily be preserved ," explained this planetary geologist.

However, Mangold called for caution, since this organic matter could also come from "inert carbonic matter", such as that released by comets.

Video: two months later, the La Palma volcano continues to throw fire stones into the sea
The eruption of the Cumbre Vieja volcano, on the island of La Palma in Spain, began on September 19 and has already completed its eighth week of volcanic activity, with an accumulated 891.9 hectares covered with lava, affecting or destroying more than 2,200 buildings. and infrastructure in that region.

The emergency, two months later, has not stopped. In recent days, the Institute of Natural Products and Agrobiology of the Higher Council for Scientific Research of Spain shared shocking images of how the situation in the La Palma volcano is progressing.

In a video shared by the institution, you can see the exact moment when the lava expelled by the volcano meets the sea and how huge rocks of fire fall . "This is how hypnotic is the encounter of lava with the sea, the growth of an island before our eyes," said the institution.

According to the Volcanic Institute of the Canary Islands, in the encounter of the lava, with a temperature higher than 1,000º C, with the sea, with a temperature around 20º C, “a thermal shock is produced that generates columns (plumes ) of water vapor loaded with hydrochloric acid (HCl) as a consequence of the important content of chloride (Cl-) in seawater ”.

These columns of water vapor, whitish in color, also contain tiny particles of volcanic glass as a result of the reaction that occurs between lava and seawater, explains the entity.

These steam columns of an acidic nature as a consequence of the generation of hydrochloric acid (HCl) represent a local danger - well defined - for the people who visit or are in the coastal area where this encounter between the lava and the sea takes place. “It is not about a volcanic column or plume as energetic as the one that takes place in the volcanic cone where a jet of acidic volcanic gases is being produced that are injected into the atmosphere with so much energy that they reach 5 km in height. ”, Continues the Institute.

As is known, last Wednesday, November 10, the lava reached the Atlantic Ocean again, reported the Ministry of Transport of Spain on its social networks.

Experts from the Volcanological Institute of the Canary Islands (Involcán) explained that it is likely that this lava flow joined the first formation of waste on the coast, which fell at the end of September. However, the most shocking thing has been the sound captured by the scientists.

On its Twitter account, this institute shared several videos in which the dimension of the natural phenomenon and the shocking sound emitted by the path of the lava can be captured.

Meanwhile, since the emergency began, no death had been confirmed, but in recent days the authorities found the lifeless body of a man in the security perimeter established by the eruption of the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the Spanish island of La Palma . in the archipelago of the Canary Islands.

The eruption had not caused any deaths so far, but lava flows and gas emissions have forced the authorities to close off part of the island's territory.

It is in this area that the body of a man was found, in the municipality of El Paso, as confirmed to AFP by the Civil Guard, without giving more details about the identity of the victim, the circumstances of his death or the discovery of his body.

Authorities allowed timely access to the area so that residents can retrieve their personal belongings, added the Civil Guard.

"Right now only one person has died," Miguel Angel Morcuende, technical director of the Canary Islands Volcanic Emergency Plan (Pevolca), said at a press conference.

"We are waiting for the corresponding autopsy to be carried out to find out what the cause of death is," he added.

As is known, the Cumbre Vieja entered into an eruptive phase on September 19, when it emitted spectacular rivers of lava that began a slow descent until finally reaching the sea, ten days later.

The fiery flows of magma - gray and orange - have been destroying everything in their path, and they already cover 1,018 hectares.

This is the third eruption of a volcano on La Palma in the last century , after San Juan in 1949 and Teneguía in 1971.

Both left a total of three deaths, two of them due to inhalation of toxic gases, although they caused less damage than that of the Cumbre Vieja, since in those decades the island was less populated.