But don't phone home just yet
Life on Mars? How about light on Mars? Actually, how about neither?
NASA's
Curiosity rover snapped an image of what appears to be a bright white
light shining on the planet's horizon. The speculation surrounding the
photo was covered by many outlets, including NBC News and the Houston Chronicle......So what is it? Is it a UFO? It's a UFO, right? Come on, say it's a UFO, will ya?
Well, no. Yahoo News asked NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory what was up. In an email, Justin Maki, an imaging scientist there and the lead for the Curiosity's engineering cameras, explained that the "bright spots" appear in images taken by the stereo camera's right-eye camera, but not the left.
"In the two right-eye images, the spot is
in different locations of the image frame and, in both cases, at the
ground surface level in front of a crater rim on the horizon."
"One possibility is that the light is the
glint from a rock surface reflecting the sun. When these images were
taken each day, the sun was in the same direction as the bright spot,
west-northwest from the rover, and relatively low in the sky. The rover
science team is also looking at the possibility that the bright spots
could be sunlight reaching the camera's CCD directly through a vent hole
in the camera housing, which has happened previously on other cameras
on Curiosity and other Mars rovers when the geometry of the incoming
sunlight relative to the camera is precisely aligned. We think it's
either a vent-hole light leak or a glinty rock."
Doug Ellison, who also works at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
offered his opinion on Twitter. His theory: a "cosmic ray hit."