On July 31, Mars will travel to the closest point in its orbit to Earth, about 57.6 million km from our planet. This is the shortest Earth-Mars distance since 2003. When Mars and Earth are close to each other, Mars appears very bright in our sky. It also makes it easier to see wit...
Planet Mars has always inspired human fantasy. This is one of our two close neighbor planets, and it exhibits similarities to Earth. Through a telescope, even in early times, features could be identified, which change periodically with seasons. This stimulated the idea of vegetation existing on ...
Mars has two relatively small natural moons, Phobos and Deimos, which orbit close to the planet. Asteroid capture is a long-favored theory but their origin remains uncertain. Both satellites were discovered in 1877 by Asaph Hall, and are named after the characters Phobos (panic/fear) and Deimo...
episodically. The surface composition and physical properties (mineralogy, chemistry, thermal inertia, and density) have been mapped in great detail by remote-sensing instruments that reveal a diversity of processes close to that observed on Earth. The morphology of the major geological features has b...
(CBS/CNN) -- If you spied a fiery red star close to the full moon over the weekend, it was actually Mars shining its bright red light in the night sky. The planet will be visible at night throughout October, rising the highest in the sky around midnight each evening. It will shine...
Close-up of a pitted volcanic rock resting on the Chryse Planitia lowland of Mars,... NASA/JPL/Caltech Mars Seven very dark holes on the north slope of a Martian volcano that have been proposed... JPL-Caltech—ASU/USGS/NASA Mars ...
Mars is one of the closest planets on Earth and the fourth planet from the sun (Venus is the other). Mars is one of the night sky’s most visible planets, appearing as a brilliant red light point. Even though Mars is hostile to people, robotic explorers such as NASA‘s new ...
around the turn of the 20th century are not visible inclose-upspacecraftimages. They were almost certainly imaginary features that observers thought they saw while straining to make out objects close to the limit of resolution of their telescopes. Other features, such as the “wave of darkening...
In mid-January Mars becomes visible from the Southern hemisphere and as far North as low-Northern latitudes, rising over the ESE horizon. As it enters the morning sky Mars, a first magnitude object at +1.3, is accompanied in the morning sky to its West by the inferior planets Mercury (...
This marked the close of the previous cycle and initiated a new one, which we are in now. The retrograde period falls in the middle of the cycle. Mars goes retrograde on December 6, 2024 at 6º Leo. It then travels backwards until February 23, 2025 where it turns direct (forward) ...