Mars Weather
DB: I’m Deborah Byrd.
JB: And I’m Joel Block for Earth and Sky – Thursday, February 26. If you saw a bright reddish object near the moon last night, it was the planet Mars. The moon is farther from Mars tonight. It’s between Mars and another reddish object – this time a star, Aldebaran in the constellation Taurus. The two reddish “stars” on either side of the moon look similar, but see if you can notice that Mars twinkles less than Aldebaran.
DB: If you stood on the surface of Mars, you’d find an atmosphere that’s very thin and mostly carbon dioxide. A human on Mars’ surface couldn’t breathe without special equipment. And because Mars doesn’t have an ozone layer, levels of ultraviolet radiation on its surface are lethal to unshielded life as we know it here on Earth.
JB: And yet Mars is the world in our solar system that most resembles Earth – and people from Earth might one day live there. If they do, they’ll find the weather on Mars can change rapidly. When Mars is closest to the sun, as it’s been in the past year, temperatures go above freezing . . . and global dust storms sometimes blot out the sky. Then as Mars’ distance from the sun increases, temperatures can quickly plunge below freezing. The dust freezes and falls to the ground, while the sky fills with icy clouds.
DB: For more, come to today’s show at earthsky.org. Thanks today to Research Corporation, a foundation for the advancement of science. We’re Block and Byrd for Earth and Sky.
Links:
Mars Chaotic Climate (The Australian National University)
