What are some interesting facts about Mars?

The first telescopic observation of Mars was by Galileo Galilei in 1610. Within a century, astronomers discovered distinct albedo features on the planet, including the dark patch Syrtis Major Planum and polar ice caps.

Mars may look hot, but donʼt let its color fool you. Mars is actually pretty cold! In orbit, Mars is about 50 million miles farther away from the Sun than Earth! That means it gets a lot less light and heat to keep it warm.

When this happened, the iron within the dust reacted with oxygen, producing a red rust color. So, Mars is red because it has a layer of rusty dust covering its entire surface! Mars has some of the largest dust storms in the galaxy, in which the red dust gets whipped into the light atmosphere surrounding the planet.

There are many volcanoes on Mars. Olympus Mons is a shield volcano on Mars and it is the largest volcano in the Solar System. Located in the Tharsis region of the planet along with three other large volcanoes, Olympus Mons measures an incredible 27 km in height and is 3 times taller than Mount Everest.

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and is the second smallest planet in the solar system. Named after the Roman god of war, Mars is also often described as the “Red Planet” due to its reddish appearance. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphere composed primarily of carbon dioxide.

The length of time for Mars to complete one orbit around the Sun is its sidereal year, and is about 686.98 Earth solar days, or 668.5991 sols. Because of the eccentricity of Mars’ orbit, the seasons are not of equal length.

How long does it take Mars to go around the sun? Mars revolves or orbits around the Sun once every 1.88 Earth years, or once every 686.93 Earth days. Mars travels at an average speed of 53,979 miles per hour or 86,871 kilometers per hour in its orbit around the Sun.

The ancient Greeks were fascinated by Mars. Its blood red color led them to attribute the planet to Ares, their god of war. When the Romans conquered the Greeks, they renamed the gods and the planet Ares became the planet Mars. All planets in our solar system are named for Roman gods.

Phobos, one of Mars’ moons, is getting closer to the planet. According to the model, Phobos will break apart upon reaching the Roche limit, and become a set of rings in roughly 70 million years.

The weather on Mars is both totally alien and somewhat Earth-like all at once. The planetary axis of Mars is tilted about 25 degrees, similar to Earth’s tilt, but its orbit is more elliptical than Earth so its seasons are about twice as long. The atmosphere on Mars is extremely thin.

4. Mars Has Some Extreme Highs And Lows In Terrain: The surface gravity of Mars is only 37% of what you would find on Earth, which makes it possible for volcanoes to be taller without collapsing. This is why we have Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano known on a planet in the Solar System.

The planet Mars was formed, along with the rest of the solar system, about 4.6 billion years ago. But exactly how the planets formed remains a subject of debate.

Its surface is rocky, with canyons, volcanoes, dry lake beds and craters all over it. Red dust covers most of its surface. Mars has clouds and wind just like Earth. Tiny dust storms can look like tornados and large ones can be seen from Earth.

The common surface features of Mars include dark slope streaks, dust devil tracks, sand dunes, Medusae Fossae Formation, fretted terrain, layers, gullies, glaciers, scalloped topography, chaos terrain, possible ancient rivers, pedestal craters, brain terrain, and ring mold craters.

All Mars dust storms are powered by sunshine. Solar heating warms the Martian atmosphere and causes the air to move, lifting dust off the ground. The chance for storms is increased when there are great temperature variations like those seen at the equator during the Martian summer.

Mars is often called the ‘Red Planet’ because it appears in the sky as an orange-red star. The colour caused the ancient Greeks and Romans to name it after their god of war. Today, thanks to visiting spacecraft, we know that the planet’s appearance is due to rust in the Martian rocks.

The answer is that it would take 1.3 million Earths to fill up the Sun. That’s a lot of Earths. The Sun makes up 99.86% of the mass of the Solar System. And it’s the giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn which make the most of that remaining .14% of the Solar System.

Mars is the “Red Planet” for a very good reason: its surface is made of a thick layer of oxidized iron dust and rocks of the same color. Maybe another name for Mars could be “Rusty.” But the ruddy surface does not tell the whole story of the composition of this world.

Jupiter is known for its stripes and large red spot. The Galileo spacecraft took this photo of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot in 1996. Jupiter’s four largest moons (Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto) are known as the Galilean satellites because they were discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610.

The planets of the solar system as depicted by a NASA computer illustration. Orbits and sizes are not shown to scale. A gas giant is a large planet composed mostly of gases, such as hydrogen and helium, with a relatively small rocky core. The gas giants of our solar system are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.