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Mars comes closer to Earth more than any other planet save Venus at its nearest—56 million km is the closest distance between Mars and Earth, whereas the closest Venus comes to Earth is 40 million km. Mars comes closest to Earth every other year, around the time of its opposition, when Earth is sweeping between the Sun and Mars. Extra-close ...
Mars hosts many enormous extinct volcanoes (the tallest is Olympus Mons, 21.9 km or 13.6 mi tall) and one of the largest canyons in the Solar System (Valles Marineris, 4,000 km or 2,500 mi long). Geologically , the planet is fairly active with marsquakes trembling underneath the ground, dust devils sweeping across the landscape, and cirrus clouds .
The length of time for Mars to complete one orbit around the Sun in respect to the stars, its sidereal year, is about 686.98 Earth solar days (≈ 1.88 Earth years), or 668.5991 sols. Because of the eccentricity of Mars' orbit, the seasons are not of equal length.
At the present time the proper distance equals the comoving distance since the cosmological scale factor has value one: () =. The proper distance represents the distance obtained as if one were able to freeze the flow of time (set d t = 0 {\displaystyle dt=0} in the FLRW metric) and walk all the way to a galaxy while using a meter stick. [ 2 ]
The Moon and Mars on August 27, 2005, showing Mars to be much smaller. The Mars hoax was a hoax circulated by e-mail that began in 2003, that claimed that Mars would look as large as the full Moon to the naked eye on August 27, 2003. The hoax has since resurfaced each time before Mars is at its closest to Earth, about every 26 months. It began ...
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A large doughnut shaped cloud appears in the north polar region of Mars around the same time every Martian year and of about the same size. [88] It forms in the morning and dissipates by the Martian afternoon. [88] The outer diameter of the cloud is roughly 1,600 km (1,000 mi), and the inner hole or eye is 320 km (200 mi) across. [89]
Spotting Mars at opposition is easier than you might think because the planet will stand out due to its color and radiance. Instead of appearing a whitish yellow shade like the stars, it will be a ...