Would the night sky on Mars be filled with twinkling stars like we’re used to seeing on Earth? That depends on who’s looking. If there were a space observatory on Mars, you could expect it to observe millions of stars, but those aren’t the kinds of images that the cameras on NASA’s rovers are designed to capture. What’s the real story of the viral “Mars night sky” image? Abigail Fraeman, deputy project scientist for NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover, separates fact from fiction when it comes to stargazing through a rover’s eyes.
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00:00Have you ever wondered what the night sky looks like on Mars?
00:03You might have seen digitally altered images like this one on social media.
00:07While it's certainly magical, it's not what NASA's rovers have been capturing on the red planet.
00:12These are two separate images that have been combined.
00:16In the foreground of this altered image, you see Curiosity.
00:19In the background, a stunning star field.
00:22Now here's the original image from Curiosity.
00:24You can see it was daytime when the rover snapped that selfie.
00:28And here's the original star field, which comes from a space observatory on Earth.
00:32If you had a space observatory on Mars, you could get an image like that.
00:36But Curiosity's cameras do something different.
00:39They're optimized to showcase Mars' unique landscapes and intriguing features.
00:44If you were lying on Mars on a clear night, the sky would likely remind you of our sky on Earth,
00:49especially in the darkest places like remote deserts or mountaintops.
00:53But until we ourselves can go camping on Mars,
00:55we'll continue to view the planet and its sky through the eyes of our robotic rovers,
01:00knowing that each image they send back reveals a little bit more about the red planet.