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The planet Mars takes 687 Earth days to orbit the Sun. This means that a martian year lasts 22.9 months, or almost two full Earth years. A martian day is only very slightly longer than an Earth day, so that Mars’ year is 670 martian days long. Mars’s year is longer than Earth’s because it is further from the Sun than Earth is, so that it feels the Sun’s gravity more weakly than the ...
The planet Venus takes 224.7 Earth days to orbit the Sun. This means than a Venus year is a little more than seven months long. Interestingly, Venus’ day is slightly longer than its year, and the planet revolves around its axis backwards compared to all the other planets in the Solar System, so that Venus is very close to being tidally locked.
The planet Jupiter takes 4331.6 earth days to orbit around the Sun. This means than one Jupiter year equals almost 11.9 Earth years. Because Jupiter rotates so rapidly around its axis, its year lasts 10,501 of its own days. Jupiter has such a long year because it is quite far from the Sun.
On 19 June 1976, the first of the two Viking probes reached Mars orbit, and began the first phase of its mission: photograph the surface of Mars so that the engineers back in the JPL lab on Earth could find a suitable landing spot (The entire set of images returned by the probes can be ordered on CDROM from NASA, incidentally). On 25 July, the ...
Mercury has such a short year because it is very close to the Sun. According to Newton’s Law of gravity, this means that the Sun’s gravity is much stronger at Mercury than it is for Earth, and this requires it to move a great deal faster if it is to stay in its orbit, which is why it has such a short year.
One of my main goals is to try and share a bit of knowledge and understanding about the incredible universe. I have been steadily writing and posting various articles to explain and educate the masses (that’s you, dear reader!) a bit more about some of the science behind the hobby. An urban astronomer might never see most of the things we talk about here, but it’s still good to know about ...
One of Earth’s distinctive features is it’s geologically dynamic nature. Heat is distributed through the molten core and mantle via vast slow convection currents, and these steady flows have fractured the crust into continent-sized plates. As these currents flow, they drag the plates around, in a process called Plate Tectonics. Where plates slide against each other, tension builds in the ...
Well now that depends on what you’re measuring from! Let’s try some possibilities: How far is Mars from the Sun? On average: 227.92 million kilometers. But, like everything else in the universe, Mars does not have a perfectly circular orbit. Instead, it moves in an ellipse, sometimes getting as far out as 249.23 million kilometers, and sometimes as close as 206.62 million kilometers. How ...
Open to anybody under the age of eighteen, anywhere in the world, entrants must submit their suggestion for a name (up to 16 characters long), along with an explanation of why it would be a good name and what it means. The deadline is 2 December, 2012. Since astronomical names can only be assigned by the International Astronomical Union (IAU ...
Small rocky planets like Earth got thrown all over the place, and we know that there was at least one collision when a planet the size of Mars smashed into Earth. Earth itself survived, but huge amounts of rock, instantly melted into lava by the force of the impact, were thrown out into space.