NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has captured its first nighttime
view of the Red Planet using a camera and ultraviolet light on
its robotic arm. Curiosity snapped the Mars night photos in
visible and ultraviolet light on Wednesday (Jan. 22) to take an
up-close look at a rock called "Sayunei," which the rover had
scuffed with a wheel to scratch off surface dust, NASA announced
Thursday. One goal was to seek out any fluorescent minerals,
they added. The rover took the photos with the help of small
light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that serve as lights for the Mars
Hand Lens Imager — or MAHLI — a microscope-like camera at the
end of Curiosity's robot arm. The camera has an adjustable focus
and several LED light sources for its Martian photography. "The
purpose of acquiring observations under ultraviolet illumination
was to look for fluorescent minerals," MAHLI principal
investigator Ken Edgett of Malin Space Science Systems in San
Diego, Calif., said in a statement Thursday. "These data just
arrived this morning. The sci