Kim Hyatt wrote:

The lighting looks like an earth sunset/twilight. Any idea of the time? Or is this a processing artifact?

Since the lander is sitting on it's shadow I'm guessing the Sun was high in the sky when the mosaic (the image is made of 12 pictures stitched together) was taken. There were several questions about the colors and image processing during today's new conference. My favorite came after a member of the panel said the colors were only approximate noting the NASA meatball (lower right corner of the image) appeared red instead of blue. The reporter asked then that if the meatball which is really blue shows up as red then is the surface of Mars which shows up as red really blue also. :-) He was assured that Mars is red. But then another reporter noted that the surface looks more brown than red and wanted to know why a brown planet is called the Red Planet. Sigh... Patrick