Dikhyaa Mohanty 
According to NASA, the Curiosity rover on Mars has taken a “postcard” of morning and afternoon illumination on the planet’s surface. Two black-and-white panoramas taken by Curiosity’s navigation cameras were combined with color to create the postcard, which is an artistic representation of the terrain. The images were captured on April 8 at 9.20 a.m. and 3.40 p.m. local Mars time, with radically differing illumination conditions.
“Capturing two times of day provides dark shadows because the lighting is coming in from the left and the right, like you might have on a stage — but instead of stage lights, we’re relying on the Sun,” said Curiosity engineer Doug Ellison of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, who planned and processed the images, in a statement.
On the morning-taken portions of the postcard, blue was added, and on the afternoon-taken portions, yellow. Since its 2012 landing, Curiosity has been investigating the Gale Crater region in the foothills of Mount Sharp, a 5 kilometer high mountain. Marker Band Valley, a meandering stretch of the “sulfate-bearing region” where the rover unexpectedly found indications of an old lake, is seen in the distance beyond its footprints.
Farther below are two hills – “Bolivar” and “Deepdale” — that Curiosity drove between while exploring “Paraitepuy Pass.” Adding to the depth of the shadows is the fact that it was winter — a period of lower airborne dust — at Curiosity’s location when the images were taken.
“Mars’ shadows get sharper and deeper when there’s low dust and softer when there’s lots of dust,” Ellison added.
Curiosity, which landed on Mars in 2012, was designed to assess whether Mars ever had an environment able to support small life forms called microbes.
