In the new ultraviolet images shared by NASA, Mars looks nothing like itself and it’s incredibly beautiful. Instead of the usual dusty red Mars for all of us, these two ultraviolet images taken by the NASA MAVEN spacecraft in July 2022 and January 2023 show the fourth planet from the Sun in bright purple, bright green, pale red wine and mottled sea shades.
Of course, these colors do not correspond to those that we see in real life, since ultraviolet rays are invisible to the naked human eye. To recreate Mars in the ultraviolet spectrum, NASA used special image processing to artificially colorize the planet. Scientists attributed these colors to certain wavelengths in the ultraviolet spectrum to study the unique features of the planet, and the results were simply amazing.
In these photos, purple indicates the atmospheric ozone of the planet, and clouds and haze in the sky are rendered in blue or white. The Martian surface is either painted in shades of beige and green, or tinted to recreate greater contrast and detail, according to NASA.
NASA scientists hope these stunning images will help them understand the planet’s rarefied atmosphere and its fascinating past.
NASA launched MAVEN in November 2013. The following year, the spacecraft entered the planet’s orbit and began its mission to study the planet’s thin atmosphere and how it lost a significant part of it in the past due to solar wind and solar radiation. And we are glad that the spacecraft still sends amazing pictures and surprises us with new scientific discoveries.
Earlier we reported on how a giant solar flare would ignite the aurora borealis on Mars.
Also recently, the European Space Agency published a new global portrait of Mars, which was compiled from images taken by the HRSC camera installed on board the Mars Express spacecraft.
According to NASA
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