Mars,is a planet in the solar system.I’ts named for the Roman god of war Ares.Mars is the fourth planet from the sun.Mars has two small heavily craterd moons, Phobos and deimos, astronomers think they are areastroid like objects captured by the planet very early in history.Phobos is about 13 miles across; Deimos,is only 7.5 miles. Mars not on a telescope, Mars is a reddish varying in brightness.
At its closes approach to earth (34 million miles)after Venus, Mars is the brightest object in the night.Mars is best seen when it is opposite the sun in Earth’s sky and closest to Earth. This happens every 15 year’s the planet comes to perihelion. Through a telescope Mars has bright orange regions and darker,less red areas the outlines and tones change in martian seasons.
The reddish color is because of it’s heavily rusted surface. The dark areas are thought to have rocks that are simmilar to terrestrial basalts, the surface is even more weathered and rusted. The brighter areas seem to have similar but even more weatherd and rusted material that apparently contain more fine, dust-sized particles than they do the dark reigons.
The mineral scapolite, which is rare on Earth,seem’s wide spread; it may serve as a store for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Bright caps, apparntly made of frost or ice, mark the planet’s polar regions. their seasonal cycle has been followed for almost two centuries .Each Martian autumn, bright clouds form over correct pole.Bellow what is called polar hood, a thin cap of carbon dioxide frost is let during autumn and winter.
By late winter, the cap may streach down to latitudes of 45 degrees. At about spring, and the end of the long polar night, the polar hood diseapers, showing the winter frost cap; then gradually decreases poleward as sunlight evaporates the gatherd frost. By mid summer the steady recessions of the annual cap stops and lasts till next autumn. These remnant polar caps are believed to consist almost all frozen water.
They are 185 miles wide at the south pole and 620 miles wide in the north. Although their real thickness is not known, they must have frozen gases and water vapor to a thickness of about 1.3 miles In addition to the polar hoods presumed to have clouds of frozen carbon dioxide- diffrent clouds are common on the planet. high altitude hazes and localized water ice clouds are watched.
The latter result from the cooling associated with rising air masses over elevated obsticals.Extensive yellow clouds, having of dust lifted by Martian winds, are especially prominent during southern summers. The Martian atomosphere consists of carbon dioxide 95%, nitrogen 2.7% argon 1.6% oxyen 0.25%, trace amounts of water vapor, carbon menoxide, and other noble gases. Mars summer temperatures may reach most 63 degrees but on average daily temperature on the surface is -27 degrees. Because of the thiness of the atomsphere.Daily tempeture varations of 180 degress are common poleward temperatures remain cold enough -189 degrees.
