Is the sky on Mars blue or red?

Question

There are pictures of the surface of Mars with both a red and blue sky. What is the explanation for this?

Answer 1

Judging by the answers you received, you are not alone in your confusion.

The daytime sky on mars is neither red, or blue, or black. It is more of a tan color. Mars does have an atmosphere, and that atmosphere is full of dust, which is what gives it that tan color. The sunrises/sunsets are generally red/pink, similar to what you find in dusty regions of Earth. If you were to filter out all the dust in the Martian atmosphere, the Martian sky would probably be blueish, for the same reason Earth's is, Rayleigh scattering by the molecules in the atmosphere. (NOT BECAUSE IT IS REFLECTING THE OCEAN!) Mars' sky would most likely appear darker blue than Earth's because it's atmosphere is thinner.

The reasons that you have seen pictures with blue or pink skies is because in some cases the cameras were calibrated with Martian dust on the lenses causing a false blue sky (Viking Landers in 1976) or the image's color was adjusted, or it was taken at sunrise/sunset.

Here is a little more detail from the site I list as my source:

On Mars, photographs from both landers (the Viking from 1976-78 and the Pathfinder in 1997) suggested that the sky is always a butterscotch tan color. Mars appears to have a permanent haze of dust, which remains suspended in the air after duststorms. The dust is the mineral "limonite," a brown iron oxide, the same mineral that forms most of the Martian surface. The sky is not blue as on Earth because Martian air is extremely thin and the limonite particles in the air are large relative to the wavelength of visible light. The reddish particles preferentially absorb blue light and effectively act as mirrors by scattering the remaining wavelengths: the color of the atmosphere is therefore pinkish, like the particles themselves.

Hope this helps clear up your questions

Answer 2

Nitrogen is the cause of Earth's blue sky, which Mars doesn't have any of. It does have high winds however that blow dust into the sky, which lower frequency light is able to penetrate better than high frequency ones. Actually, however, it's more of a yellow color.

Answer 3

Mostly sky is reflection of the planet. On Mars the dust or the soil has more of red color so on Mars sky may appear red in color.

Answer 4

The sky would appear red when there was a lot of dust in the atmosphere. The redness comes from the iron-oxide in the martian dust. In the absence of atmospheric dust, the sky would probably appear blue.

Answer 5

Different filters are used to bring out different features on the surface. If you could stand on Mars, the sky would appear black like the nighttime earth sky, because the air is so thin it doesn't reflect light around.

Answer 6

Like other planets with atmosphere, the sunset might be red, depends of time of the day on mars, when the pictures was taken, the sky is blue also red orange...

Answer 7

I also have them. But the blue one is a false image colour showing the x rays and gamma rays on the sky of mars. It is actually neither red nor blue. It is pink.

Answer 8

mars is the red planet. the planet is red, not it's sky. when you say sky, i picture you mean, from standing on mars and looking up. not, how the mars atmosphere looks from the moon or from space. the ground on mars is red, so it looks red from here. if you are standing on mars, i would bet that when you look down at your feet, you see red rocks, when you look up, you see blue sky, unless the sun is rising or setting.

Answer 9

The color of the Martian atmosphere is described as a sort of butterscotch color. It's rather thin and tends to hold a lot of iron oxide dust so it scatters red-orange light. Sunsets on Mars have a bluish tint to them.

Answer 10

pink due to two factors co2 reflects in the red spectrum and the soil of mars is comprised of silicates and iron oxide