A stunning photo published by NASA

NASA's Curiosity rover took two images on its 3299th day on Mars, which NASA experts have post-colored and stitched together. 

Quite a stunning picture published by the US space agency, which shows the different Martian solstices in a single colour image. The Curiosity spacecraft took two photos of the landscape on 16 November, one at around 9am and the other at around 4pm. The photos were originally in black and white, and the NASA experts have used post-editing to add colour to them, to illustrate the yellowish or bluish tones that result from the time of day.

The special image shows the side of Mount Sharp, 5000 metres high, with a field of sand dunes in the distance. To the right is Mount Rafael Navarro, named after NASA scientist Rafael Navarro-González, who died in January this year.

Equipped with 17 cameras, it will explore the 154-kilometre-wide Gale Crater, named after the Australian amateur astronomer Walter Frederick Gale, who explored Mars in the late 19th century.

Curiosity has been exploring Mars for more than 8 Earth years, and its main missions include studying the geology and climate of the red planet, searching for traces of water and ultimately discovering whether life existed on the planet. Another Mars probe, Opportunity, has been out of contact since August 2018 due to storms on Mars.