This text was initially printed at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Area.com’s Skilled Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
Folks from cultures the world over have been Mars since historical occasions. As a result of it seems reddish, it has usually been known as the pink planet.
The English identify for the planet comes from the Romans, who named it after their god of war as a result of its colour reminded them of blood. In actuality, the reddish colour of Mars comes from iron oxide in the rocks and dust overlaying its floor.
Your blood can also be pink because of a mixture of iron and oxygen in a molecule known as hemoglobin. So in a approach, the traditional connection between the planet Mars and blood wasn’t utterly incorrect. Rust, which is a typical type of iron oxide discovered right here on Earth, additionally usually has a reddish colour.
In my current research on exoplanets, I observe several types of alerts from planets past Earth. Numerous fascinating physics goes into how researchers understand the colours of planets and stars via several types of telescopes.
Observing Mars with probes
For those who look carefully at footage of Mars taken by rovers on its floor, you may see that a lot of the planet isn’t purely pink, however extra of a rusty brown or tan colour.
Probes despatched from Earth have taken footage exhibiting rocks with a rusty colour. A 1976 picture from the Viking lander, the very first spacecraft to land on Mars, exhibits the Martian floor coated with a layer of rusty orange mud.
Not all of Mars’ floor has the identical colour. On the poles, its ice caps seem white. These ice caps comprise frozen water, just like the ice we normally discover on Earth, however these ice caps are additionally coated by a layer of frozen carbon dioxide – dry ice.
This layer of dry ice can evaporate in a short time when daylight shines on it and grows again once more when it turns into darkish. This course of causes the white ice caps to develop and shrink in dimension relying on the Martian seasons.
Past seen mild
Mars additionally provides off mild in colours you could’t see together with your eyes however that scientists can measure with particular cameras on telescopes.
Mild itself will be considered not solely as a wave but additionally as a stream of particles called photons. The quantity of power carried by every photon is expounded to its colour. For instance, blue and violet photons have extra power than orange and pink photons.
Ultraviolet photons have much more power than the photons you may see together with your eyes. These photons are present in direct daylight, and since they’ve a lot power, they will injury the cells in your physique. You can use sunscreen to guard your self from them.
Infrared photons have much less power than the photons you may see together with your eyes, and also you don’t want any particular safety from them. That is how some kinds of night-vision goggles work: They will see mild within the infrared spectrum in addition to the seen colour spectrum. Scientists can take footage of Mars within the infrared spectrum utilizing particular cameras that work virtually like night-vision goggles for telescopes.
The colours on the infrared image aren’t actually what the infrared mild seems like, as a result of you may’t see these colours together with your eyes. They’re known as “false colours,” and researchers add them to take a look at the image extra simply.
While you examine the seen colour image and the infrared image, you may see a few of the identical options – and the ice caps are seen in each units of colours.
NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft, launched in 2013, has even taken pictures with ultraviolet light, giving scientists a unique view of each the floor of Mars and its environment.
Every new sort of image tells scientists extra in regards to the Martian panorama. They hope to make use of these particulars to reply questions on how Mars fashioned, how lengthy it had active volcanoes, the place its atmosphere came from and whether or not it had liquid water on its surface.
Astronomers are all the time in search of new methods to take telescope footage exterior of the regular visible spectrum. They will even make photos utilizing radio waves, microwaves, X-rays and gamma rays. Every a part of the spectrum they will use to take a look at an object in area represents new info they will study from.
Despite the fact that individuals have been Mars since historical occasions, we nonetheless have a lot to find out about this fascinating neighbor.
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