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Published: 2012-03-27 15:24:54 +0000 UTC; Views: 9313; Favourites: 150; Downloads: 715
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Description
Mars
mars is the fourth planet from the sun and second smallest planet in the solar system. it is named after the god of war. mars also goes by the name 'the red planet' because of its reddish appearance in the sky. mars also exists in the sun's habitable zone just like earth, so it also has water on its surface, but it is placed further out in the zone and so water mainly exists as ice at the poles.
for a small world, it has some of the largest features in the solar system, like olympus mons (the tallest mountain in the solar system thats about three times the height of mount everest here on earth!) and the valles marineres (the largest canyon system in the entire solar system that easily dwarfs the grand canyon here on earth!). so it seems that even though mars is about a third the size of earth, its features seem to be about three times the size of those seen on earth!
with mars' special features asside, its time to talk about its other areas like its atmosphere which is quite thin and composed nearly completely of carbon dioxide. mars has thin clouds in its upper atmosphere, but there blue because there made of frozen carbon dioxide. the sunsets on mars are also blue instead of the orange ones hear on earth, again because of the carbon dioxide. mars also experiences dust storms and dirt devils in some regions on its surface and rarely sometimes, huge global dust storms that completely obscure the planet's surface, similar to venus. the temperature on the surface of mars is also very cold and because mars has no magnetic field (due to its interior solidifying early in the planet's history) the surface is also highly exposed to deadly solar radiation. so the surface of mars is a hostile environment for humans, as without the proper protection, your blood would boil off in the low atmospheric pressure, then you would freeze in the chilling temperatures and finally, you would mutate and fry in the nasty radiation while all still conscious! talk about a nasty death! yeeaasshh!
mars has two asteroid moons named phobos (the larger and closer moon) and deimos (the smaller and further one). both are in synchronous orbit with one another where deimos completes exactly one orbit in the time it takes phobos to orbit mars four times. phobos is also one of three moons in the solar system that orbits their planet faster than the planet rotates on its axis. because of this, an observor on the surface of mars would see phobos rise in the west and set in east roughly three times every martian day! awesome! but because the moon orbits under the synchronous orbit altitude (the altitude at which an object orbits a planet in the same time it takes the planet to rotate once on its axis), its orbit is deteriorating and eventually phobos would break apart into a ring system around mars, again awesome, or impact the surface of the planet, not awesome. scientists say this would occur in about 55 million earth years from now.
deimos is a moon that orbits just above the synchronous orbit altitude and so, to an observer on the surface of mars, the moon would rise very slowely in the east and then set very slowely in the west. the cool thing about this moon is that, to the observer it takes nearly two martian days for the moon to return to the same point in the sky! but the moon orbits mars in about 1.2 martian days.
both moons orbit mars in close orbits. unlike our moon, luna, phobos and deimos are to small to protect mars' axial tilt from the gravity of other planets like nearby jupiter. this causes mars's axial tilt to wobble from 10° - 60° over millions of years! this results in extreme variations in the planet's seasons resulting in much hotter summers and colder winters.
mars back in it's past may had been very similar to earth. where it still had a breathable atmosphere of oxygen, the planet was warmer, it had a magnetosphere and there was an abundance of liquid water on its surface. so it is very possible that life existed on mars millions of years ago! today many scientists are trying to figure out ways to terraform mars to look and be like earth so that humans could populate the planet and live there. but this wont happen for a very long time as our technology and especially our space travell technology is very young and still needs alot of work.
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hi guys!
you can see the other three here:
Mercury: Venus: Earth:
i like the way mars came out!
as always, comments and critiques are always welcome and appreciated!
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THIS WORK IS COPYRIGHT ALPHA-ELEMENT
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Comments: 14
libetare [2020-07-11 04:32:40 +0000 UTC]
👍: 1 ⏩: 1
Alpha-Element In reply to libetare [2020-07-21 22:30:54 +0000 UTC]
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
ILuvOneDirection1 [2013-06-07 16:06:10 +0000 UTC]
Overall
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This is an awfully realistic looking illustration. I usually envision Mars as having oceans and seas of water on its surface, and sometimes even with conditions similar to Earth. The two moons, Phobos and Deimos, don't actually look like moons, but they actually look a little bit like asteroids that were kidnapped by Mars and are now being held captive as prisoners in its orbit. I do believe, however, that there is life on Mars, just like there is life on Earth. Other than that, I like this image. I dream of visiting Mars someday to visit those peaceful aliens.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Alpha-Element In reply to ILuvOneDirection1 [2013-06-09 02:07:36 +0000 UTC]
thanks for posting this and i'm glad you like it. however, this doesn't really count as a critique. its more of a comment and so i cannot post it to the deviation page. sorry.
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ILuvOneDirection1 [2013-06-07 00:47:41 +0000 UTC]
Mars once might have had more Earthlike conditions.
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Alpha-Element In reply to ILuvOneDirection1 [2013-06-07 20:36:38 +0000 UTC]
yes, true. I believe that mars once had life and was more like earth.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0