Incredible! Unbelievable Sun Halo spotted on Mars; Technological wonder Persistence Rover makes history
Perseverance by NASA Mars Rover has discovered a wonderful Sun in the Martian sky. This phenomenon is considered impossible by scientists. Check out details here.
Have you heard of Sun Halo? Several instances of Sun Halo have been seen and photographed by people living in different regions of the Earth. Now, amazingly, NASA’s Mars Rover of perseverance has done the impossible and captured a Sun on Mars. It is believed to be a never-before-seen phenomenon discovered on the planet Mars. This is a truly historic achievement as even scientists have lost hope of seeing any such incidents ever happening on Mars, but only until December 15, 2021. It is known that the Sun’s corona seen on Earth is a natural phenomenon in which ice crystals surround the Sun in a ring shape.
Information about the Sun Halo being discovered on Mars by the Perseverance Rover has just been informed by a planetary scientist at the Institute of Space Science to Space.com. “The persistence really surprised us with some of the images we got in December,” says scientist Mark Lemmon, quoted by Space.com.
“I’ve been into this for a long time and we’ve been looking for halos everywhere and in a lot of images,” he added. “I was looking at that and I thought, ‘I’m going to have a hard time finding an explanation for this.’ Because everything is a false alarm, and that looks like a halo I think it’s going to be a lot of work to figure out what’s really going on.”
Know what Sun Halo is
The sun’s corona is created by randomly oriented ice crystals in thin cirrus clouds, according to NASA. These ice crystals refract, scatter, and reflect light to give the impression of a circular rainbow. According to the University of Illinois, “A halo is a ring of light 22 degrees from the Sun or Moon and is the most common type of halo observed and formed by smaller diameter hexagonal ice crystals. 20.5 micrometers.” Additionally, the hexagonal structure of the water ice crystals determines the size of the halo, which is located 22 degrees from the sun, or the width of two fists, Space.com reports.
But is the Sun the same on Earth and Mars? There is a huge difference in the atmospheres of Earth and Mars. Mars’ atmosphere contains more carbon dioxide than Earth’s. There is even more carbon dioxide than water in the Martian atmosphere. Because of this difference in atmospheres, Lemmon and his colleagues tested whether the image was indeed the Sun’s halo or the Perseverance camera that produced the ring.
“We have a lot of images that show you what features you get from dust in the sky, and we know for sure you never get a halo from that,” Lemmon told space.com. “There’s really no other candidate,” he added.
Introducing NASA’s Tech Marvel, The Enduring Rover
The Mars Perseverance Rover, launched on July 30, 2020 in search of signs of ancient microbial life, will advance NASA’s mission to explore Mars’ past habitability. Persistence will also test technologies that help pave the way for future human exploration of Mars, NASA said. Worn on the rover’s belly for the journey to Mars is a demonstration of technology – the Mars Helicopter.
