Gale Crater · from day through dusk to a Milky Way night
What this is. A simulated view of the sky from the floor of Gale Crater, where NASA's Curiosity rover works. The Sun, Earth, our Moon, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and about 118,000 catalogued stars are placed where they really are, seen from Mars, on the date you choose. Phobos and Deimos follow their real orbits. The ground and the Milky Way's fine detail are digitally made, so this is a careful re-creation, not a photograph.
Time. It starts in the small hours of 7 June 2027, when the heart of the Milky Way is overhead, running 120× faster than real life. Before dawn Earth rises in the east as a blue-white "morning star". Choose Real time to see how slowly the sky really moves, or switch the date to Today to watch a blue Martian sunset with Earth as the evening star.
Comfort. You stay in one spot the whole time, so motion-sickness risk is very low. There are no flashing lights.
In VR (Meta Quest 2 and 3): left stick moves time · B or Y jumps sunrise / noon / sunset / night · A shows labels · right stick turns.
Build 2026-10-20c
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