{"id":140,"date":"2011-03-27T00:00:04","date_gmt":"2011-03-27T00:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/?p=140"},"modified":"2011-03-27T00:06:25","modified_gmt":"2011-03-27T00:06:25","slug":"southern-solstice-on-mars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/27\/southern-solstice-on-mars\/","title":{"rendered":"Southern solstice on Mars"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Astronomy blog for the week ending April 2, 2011<\/em><\/p>\n

Mars is about to go through its southern solstice. If the red planet\u2019s seasons were more like Earth\u2019s, we\u2019d say it\u2019s winter in the northern hemisphere and summer in the southern hemisphere. Solstice time is April 8, 2011 at 09:41 UT.<\/p>\n

The atmosphere on Mars is thinner than Earth\u2019s. The sun\u2019s farther away. The days aren\u2019t as long. There\u2019s no vegetation. And the surface of Mars is mostly rock instead of water. For all those reasons, weather and climate on Mars are different than on Earth so we can\u2019t make all of the same expectations of the seasons there.<\/p>\n

On a really warm day on Mars the high might be 20\u00b0C (68\u00b0F). But you wouldn\u2019t be out in short sleeves. There aren\u2019t many air molecules to protect you from radiation from space. And even if you could breathe such thin air, you couldn\u2019t tolerate the 95% carbon dioxide content. Any people heading to Mars for exploration, recreation, or whatever in the decades ahead will need space suits.<\/p>\n

Dust storms are rather common on Mars. They happen more often when the planet is near perihelion (closest to the sun) as Mars was in March. The closer sun is able to heat the thin Martian air a little more at this time and cause more of a heat differential to drive the winds.<\/p>\n

The dust storms there are no mere dust devils. They\u2019re often bigger than the 1930s dust bowl storms. The entire planet can be obscured by dust as happened when Mariner 9 took pictures in 1971. You can see surface details on Mars with a telescope when there\u2019s not a dust storm happening. But you\u2019ll see haze when there is.<\/p>\n

Even without dust storms, the appearance of Mars changes. The polar ice caps grow and shrink depending on the season. Other parts look darker or lighter. It\u2019s not hard to understand why people who pointed scopes at Mars in the 1800s thought it must be vegetation growing and dying off as happens in the temperate zones of Earth.<\/p>\n

Today, evidence that is more directly obtained and more critically examined hasn\u2019t convinced scientists that there\u2019s life of any sort on Mars. But that\u2019s not stopping some of them from trying to prove that there used to be life there. There are some who wonder if the red planet can be terraformed, that is, made to be like Earth so we can have another planet to call home when Earth isn\u2019t suitable anymore or when Earth is overpopulated.<\/p>\n

If you want to take a look at what\u2019s happening on Mars these days, it\u2019s a little bit of a challenge. It rises just a little before the sun. Surface details will be easier to see in July when the planet is surrounded by night darkness. Earth\u2019s seasons will change by then from northern spring and southern fall to northern summer and southern winter. But Mars, taking twice as long to orbit the sun, will still be in northern winter and southern summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On a really warm summer day on Mars, the high may be 20 Celsius (68 Fahrenheit), but you wouldn’t be out in short sleeves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[87,25,84,83,85,86],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":154,"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions\/154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}