DDT2005 [TeamGodvek]

Imagine standing on Mars and looking up at the evening sky. Among the countless points of light, some would be familiar planets from our own Solar System. Earth, Jupiter, and Venus can all appear as bright objects in the Martian sky. Just as we observe planets from Earth, an observer on Mars would see them changing positions as they travel around the Sun. Earth would appear as a distant point of light, sometimes accompanied by the Moon. NASA’s Curiosity rover has even photographed Earth and the Moon together from the Martian surface. Venus can also shine brightly because its thick cloud cover reflects a large amount of sunlight. Jupiter, despite being much farther away, remains visible because of its enormous size. However, these planets would not always appear together. Their positions depend on their individual orbits, and their apparent brightness changes with distance and viewing geometry. Mars also has a very different sky from Earth. Its thin atmosphere contains fine dust that scatters sunlight, often producing a reddish or yellowish appearance during the day. Interestingly, Martian sunsets can appear blue near the Sun because fine dust allows more blue light to travel toward an observer along that direction. The image illustrates what a planetary alignment might look like from Mars, although the identities of the three bright objects cannot be confirmed from the picture alone. From another planet, Earth becomes just another point of light in the sky, indistinguishable to the naked eye from the other distant worlds orbiting our Sun. Source: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory; NASA Mars Exploration Program.