NASA just released a striking new image of the Martian landscape taken during the quiet, early morning hours of dawn. The image reveals the captivating shapes of wind-carved cliffs as they are gently illuminated by the Sun’s first light.

NASA’s Curiosity rover captured the scene on August 11 at 8:30 a.m. local Mars time, about an hour after sunrise. Using the rover’s Mastcam, scientists were able to get the most detailed view yet of steep, rugged crags, known as yardangs, scattered across the horizon.

This layer of rock formation is unlike any other seen by Curiosity so far, and scientists aren’t quite sure how it came to be. “The yardang layer looks out of place. It’s the wrong color, the layers tilt at an odd angle, and it almost appears plastered on,” Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement. “But that’s what makes it exciting to reach.”

The newly released panorama is made up of six individual images that were stitched together to create the dramatic scene. Unlike most images taken by Curiosity’s Mastcam, NASA chose to process this one without white balancing to preserve its early morning appearance.

The Curiosity rover captures the Sun rising on crags known as yardangs, a scene that scientists have long been waiting to see up close. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/NJQH9yNEYR

The resulting image allows us to see Mars in a different light, literally. Instead of the familiar scene of a red-hued, jagged desert, the recently released panorama invokes a soft stillness that, while decidedly alien, still seems awfully familiar.

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