Daylight on Mars

[purplecat]

I have no idea why I am so completely mind-blown by the idea that there is daylight on Mars because, well, duh! - maybe it is growing up with all those pictures of the moon-landing against a dark sky. But I am completely mindblown by the idea that there is daylight on Mars.



Image from NASA, obviously.

Comments

[fredbassett]

You're right!

It is rather mind-blowing, even though it shouldn't be.

I was brought up on the Martian books of Edgar Rice Burroughs, so I want to know where all the folks are from that!

[daniel-saunders.livejournal.com]

Whenever NASA sends photos from Mars, the thing that always strikes me is how much it looks like a Doctor Who quarry, just with a bigger horizon. All those years of jokes about the programme being cheap (not to mention the new series avoiding quarries like the (space) plague, bar The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit) and that's actually what alien planets look like!

More seriously, the other thing that always occurs to me is how difficult it is to get a sense of scale with no known landmarks or items. Are the things in the foreground small rocks quite close or big rocks quite far away? Probably the former, but I've seen Martian photos where it's a lot harder to tell.

[reggietate.livejournal.com]

It's a strange thought, isn't it? I imagine it's kind of gloomy compared to Earth, but there has to be some light, obviously. And the sky isn't purple (see Quatermass and the Pit *g*). I'm quite disappointed!

[nyarbaggytep.livejournal.com]

Ooh, it's funny to look at it, I don't know why either, I think I just imagine planet = in space, space = dark, therefore planet = dark.

[mysteriousaliwz.livejournal.com]

Have you seen this one? It's a 360 panoramic one you can navigate around by clicking & dragging the cursor, and you can see the sun in the sky. Fascinating :)

The landscape looks relatively featureless compared to Earth though.

http://www.360cities.net/image/curiosity-rover-martian-solar-day-2#148.79,35.38,110.0