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Experience The Eerie Images Of Mars During The Wintertime

(Image Credit Google)
This week marks the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere of Earth, but there are also wintery sights on Mars. Mars is a cold environment in general and is especially cold in the poles and during the winter, with average temperatures about minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit and dipping as low as minus 220 degrees Fahrenheit. Recently, NASA released a collection of images of Mars taken from orbit that depict the winter climate that exists on our neighboring planet. Because Mars's atmosphere is so thin, its weather differs greatly from that of Earth. Because dust is whipped up from the surface into huge storms that can blanket the entire planet, dust storms, which have a density of just 1% of that of Earth's atmosphere, are the most severe weather occurrences. On Mars, snow does fall from time to time, but it only ever takes one of two forms: water ice snow, like on Earth, or dry ice snow, which forms because it is so cold. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="950"]A Winter Wonderland on Mars - NASA Mars Picture Credit: NASA[/caption] According to Sylvain Piqueux, a Mars researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, there are enough falls for you to cross them with snowshoes. However, if you wanted to go skiing, you would need to enter a crater or cliffside where snow could accumulate on a sloping surface. The HiRISE instrument on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this image of dry ice producing frost over sand dunes during the winter on Mars. A fun fact about dry ice snowflakes is that they would have a different shape from water ice snowflakes, which usually have six sides. We are aware that dry-ice snowflakes would be cube-shaped because carbon dioxide ice has a four-fold symmetry, according to Piqueux. These snowflakes would be smaller than the width of a human hair, according to the Mars Climate Sounder. Another instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Mars Environment Sounder, uses infrared light to see through clouds and gather information about the martian climate. [caption id="attachment_75354" align="aligncenter" width="1200"]Mars wintertime Image: NASA[/caption] In addition to orbiters, ground-based equipment like the MEDA suite on the Perseverance rover, which can detect wind speed and direction, pressure, and temperature from its location in the Jezero Crater, are helping us understand about the weather on Mars. Visit NASA JPL's website to see even more pictures of the Martian winter.

By Jozeph P

Journalism explorer, tech Enthusiast. Love to read and write.

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