According Space.comNASA’s Perseverance rover, currently on Mars, was able to capture a moment of perfect conditions, proving a theory astronomers have long held: The rover captured a solar halo. “On Earth, when conditions are right, ice crystals in the atmosphere can distort sunlight to create the appearance of a bright spot on either side of the sun or a halo that hits it.” Space.com explains. Astronomers have long believed that the optical phenomenon could occur in other plants. But in a decade of exploration, this has never been captured. NASA/JPL-Caltech/Mark Lemmon That changed on December 15, 2021, when Perseverance managed to capture the phenomenon. “The persistence really surprised us with some of the images we got in December,” said Mark Lemmon, a planetary scientist at the Space Science Institute, a nonprofit research institute in Boulder. Space.com. “I’ve been working on this for a long time, and we’ve looked for halos everywhere and in many images,” he added. “I looked at it and thought, ‘I’m going to have a hard time finding an explanation for this.’ Because it was all a false alarm, and this looks so much like a halo that I thought it would be a lot of work to figure out what was really going on.” Space.com explains that when the conditions are right, we can see the halo effect here on Earth. It occurs when ice crystals in the atmosphere bend sunlight to create the appearance of a bright spot or halo around the sun. The size and temperature of the crystals affect whether or not a halo can be seen. Also, crystals made up of other chemicals in the atmosphere can produce a halo, but it will look slightly different than what we see on Earth, Space.com explains. “It’s almost like a fingerprint that tells you what the element was, what the shape of the particle was, and then a little bit about the size,” Lemmon said. The capture of the halo on Mars was a big moment for the researchers, who published their findings in the September 3 issue of Geophysical Research Letters. Lemmon explained that seeing the halo was incredible and would teach them a lot. But in typical scientific fashion, he wants to replicate the findings before he gets too excited. “I think the most important thing for us is that we learned it’s something that can happen,” he said. “We need to look for it more in Perseverance, on this site.” Not signed up for Fatherly’s newsletter yet? We’re not mad, just disappointed.
