This is what sunset looks like on Mars

Curiosity, which landed on Mars on August 6, 2012, has been busy for approaching three years now. The rover sends back information about its activities. This includes photos it has taken with its powerful Mastcam, its high-resolution colour camera.

2012年8月6号，好奇号火星探测器到达火星，三年间，探测器一直在执行任务。探测器传回了执行其任务的信息。其中包括使用高清彩色桅杆相机照的照片。

Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of rocks in those images. But finally, for the first time, Curiosity’s Mastcam captured the setting sun on the Red Planet.

不出意料，很多照片中都有岩石。但是最终好奇号桅杆相机首次传回了“红色星球”上日落的照片。

And it looks starkly different to our warm-hued terrestrial sunsets, washed in a gorgeous range of cool blues. This is because of the thinner Martian atmosphere and the dust in it. The images of the sunset were taken in between dust storms, but while plenty of dust still remained in the air. This allowed researchers to analyse the vertical distribution of dust in the Martian atmosphere.

与地球上日落的暖色调不同，火星上的日落时则偏冷的蓝光。这是因为火星的大气层比较稀薄，并充斥着灰尘。拍摄该日落的照片时恰逢尘暴，空气中还夹杂着灰尘。研究人员可据此对大气层中灰尘的垂直分布展开分析。

That’s the opposite of Earth sunsets, where the sky grows red and yellow as the sun dips into the horizon, with the rest remaining blue.

这与地球表面的日落完全不同，地球上太阳落山时，漫天皆是红色和黄色的余晖，太阳落山之后，天空化为蓝色。

The images were returned from Curiosity in black and white. If you look at them carefully, you’ll see a sort of hashed texture to the image. This pattern is called the Bayer matrix, and it’s how the Mastcam codes colour into images.

好奇号传回地球的照片是黑白照片。如果仔细观看，你会发现照片有散列的感觉。这种现象被称作是拜耳阵列，也是桅杆相机成相的原理。

The Bayer filter is a series of colour filters painted over the Mastcam’s detector. Each pixel is painted either red, green or blue, and when the Mastcam’s shutter opens, light enters into each of these pixels.

拜耳滤镜是指安装在桅杆相机检测器上的一系列彩色滤镜。每个像素或被涂成红色，或绿色，或蓝色。桅杆相机的快门打开时，这些像素就可捕捉到光线。

However, the sensor itself can’t interpret the colours on its own. Digital cameras have on-board software to decode the greyscale matrix that emerges, but some of the Bayer data coming back from Curiosity needs to be decoded on Earth.

但是感应器并不能成相。数码相机上装载的软件可将出现的灰阶矩阵解码，但是好奇号传回的一些拜耳数据需要在地球上才可以解码。

These images, taken over a period of about 6 minutes, 51 seconds, were decoded by space imaging enthusiast Damia Bouic, who wrote on her blog: Although it’s in glorious high-resolution, and the first view from Curiosity, this is not the first Mars sunset we’ve ever seen. In 2010, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory released a video of the Martian sunset as observed by the Opportunity rover on November 4 and 5, 2010.

接受过程花费了6分钟51秒，空间图片爱好者达米亚最终为其解码，她在博客上写道：尽管这是高清图片，也是好奇号第一次捕捉到的落日，但这并不是我们首次见到火星上的日落景象。2010年11月4号和5号，机遇号火星探测器于捕捉的火星上日落场景，美国国家航空航天局喷气推进实验室发布了该视频。

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来源:CNN 双语新闻爱语吧作者:邱灿