Mars Weather Dashboard Widget

Hi everyone! We're MobiliseMe. For our Dribbble debut, we decided to share something interesting, so... here's a Martian weather widget from a project we've been working on to model the temperature, weather and atmospheric conditions of Mars!

Despite having to enlarge the Sun and the Martian moons to 140% scale for visibility, this is approximately what a human would see at sunset from the Gale Crater on Mars.

Some points of interest:

- The Sun on Mars appears blue at sunset due to a mixture of the high carbon dioxide levels and iron oxide particles in the air reflecting red light back into the atmosphere.

- The temperature shown is actually a realistic value for this time of day.

- The icon used to signify night is not a crescent moon as on Earth but rather a to-scale depiction of Phobos and Deimos, the two Martian moons.

- The date string, "Lun, 9 Sagittarius, 215" is a real Martian date based upon the Darian calendar, equivalent to August 7th, 2013.

- On this day in 1976, the Viking 2 probe entered Mars orbit.

- "Lun" is an abbreviation of "Sol Lunae" or the equivalent of solar Monday on Mars.

- "Sagittarius" is the name of the first month of the Darian calendar which consists of 24 months of ~28 days in length, each named after one of twelve chosen figures of the Zodiac, alternating between their Latin and Sanskrit names.

- The year 215 is based upon the 1609 telescopic epoch, signifying the first human telescopic observation of Mars by Galileo, along with the publishing of Kepler's first and second laws of planetary motion.