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The surface color of the planet Mars appears reddish from a distance because of rusty atmospheric dust. [1] From close up, it looks more of a butterscotch , [ 1 ] and other common surface colors include golden, brown, tan, and greenish, depending on minerals.
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun.The surface of Mars is orange-red because it is covered in iron(III) oxide dust, giving it the nickname "the Red Planet". [22] [23] Mars is among the brightest objects in Earth's sky, and its high-contrast albedo features have made it a common subject for telescope viewing.
The dark color is consistent with the presence of mafic rocks, such as basalt. The albedo of a surface usually varies with the wavelength of light hitting it. Mars reflects little light at the blue end of the spectrum but much at red and higher wavelengths. This is why Mars has the familiar reddish-orange color to the naked eye.
Mars is often referred to as the "Red Planet" because of the rusty, reddish-orange sandscape blanketing the planet. That comes into sharp focus in our first color photo snapped by the Mars ...
The variation of Mars's axial tilt is much larger than for Earth because it lacks the stabilizing influence of a large moon like Earth's Moon. Mars has a 124,000-year obliquity cycle compared to 41,000 years for Earth.
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The dark areas of Mars are characterised by the mafic rock-forming minerals olivine, pyroxene, and plagioclase feldspar. These minerals are the primary constituents of basalt, a dark volcanic rock that also makes up the Earth's oceanic crust and the lunar maria. Ared Andromeda THEMIS colour image of olivine basalts in the Valles Marineris.
1995 photo of Mars showing approximate size of the polar caps. The planet Mars has two permanent polar ice caps of water ice and some dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide, CO 2).Above kilometer-thick layers of water ice permafrost, slabs of dry ice are deposited during a pole's winter, [1] [2] lying in continuous darkness, causing 25–30% of the atmosphere being deposited annually at either of the ...