Mars Glows Green
Sometimes one's just gotta do a deep dive into nerdy space stuff.
An Assortment of Cool Mars Info
This is a casual compilation of some interesting stuff I’ve found out about Mars with a sprinkle of green Victorian goodness in the BONUS section.
Recent studies have confirmed that Mars has a green glow, just like Earth!
(I believe that the video above is merely an artist’s representation of it, but it gets the point across)
It’s pretty interesting, and apparently it varies with the seasons and there might be a hint of a red line too?
For comparison, here’s how Earth’s outer atmosphere look like:
Check out this link if you want to see where this image is from (NASA) and learn more about the ionosphere.
Dust storms on Mars cover up the whole planet in dust every 5 years, but...
Movies always depict them like catastrophic hurricanes, but it seems like they are not like that at all. They appear to be mild breezes. Apparently NASA scientists do not find them threatening at all because they dropped valuable samples on the ground to retrieve years later.
I don’t think they mentioned their concern for sandstorms or other weather events moving the samples or even covering them up with dust. I’ve noticed some comments wondering about it and the general consensus seems to be that it is likely a non-issue.
Speaking of which, the photos we’ve got from the rovers are really cool! I recommend this video:
By the way, ancient water on mars is basically confirmed at this point with running rivers, lakes, etc. It’s just a matter of searching for potential fossilized life.
BONUS: Green is associated with nature… and poison?
The green glow of Mars reminded me of color theory, an uncommon and somewhat random correlation in this case, but let’s talk about it!
Theoretically, our first mental connection when we envision the color green should be nature (and in my case it is), but why is green associated with poison at all?
Blame the Victorians (by the way, funnily enough, there is something space-related in the video I’m liking below):
Arsenic is highly poisonous, yet Victorians chose to use it for the sake of the pretty green it helps produce. There may still be green books or other things from that era laying around or being sold so be careful.
The Victorians are to blame for a lot of things…
Resources
Here’s where I found out about this recent scientific discovery that mars atmosphere is green:
- the source paper is: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-023-02104-8 and this is the European Space Agency’s article on it.
(the image in the thumbnail is actually of Earth and the other one is an artist’s rendition)
An article on the green glow: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/green-glow-detected-mars-atmosphere-180975113/
The rest of the links can obviously be found within the text/videos.