“The Red Planet”

 Named after: the Roman God of War  Visible to the naked eye  Earliest record of observation: circa 1534 BCE, by the Ancient Egyptians  Rotation period: roughly 24 hours, 40 minutes  Revolution period: 669 Martian days  Axial tilt: 25 degrees  Radius (Polar and equatorial): roughly half of Earth’s

 Observation by Aristotle in 356/7 BCE  Observations by Tycho Brahe in 16 th century and by Johannes Kepler between  First telescope observation by Galileo Galilei in 1609  First sketch of Martian surface by Christiaan Huygens in 1659  Discovery of Martian seasons in 1719 by Giacomo Filippo Maraldi, confirmed by William Herschel in 1783  Asaph Hall’s discovery of Phobos and Deimos in 1877  First map of Martian surface by Giovanni Schiaparelli in the same year  Craters observed in 1892 by Edward Emerson Barnard

 : Percival Lowell and the Martian “canals”  1938: Orson Welles’ radio production of the “War of the Worlds”, widespread panic  1952: Gerard Kuiper and the Martian atmosphere

 Soviet Marsnik program (failure), 1961  Mariner 4 (first successful flyby), 1964  Soviet Mars 2 lander (failure), 1971  Viking 1 (first successful landing), 1976  Soviet Phobos 2 (failure), 1989  Mars Climate Orbiter (failure), 1999  Spirit and Opportunity (success), 2003

 Valles Marineris  Tharsis bulge  Olympus Mons  Cydonia  Planum Boreum and Planum Australe

 95% Carbon Dioxide  3% Nitrogen  2% Oxygen and Water  High wind  No rainfall  Average temperature is 210 Kelvin (-80 degrees Fahrenheit)  Frozen waters below surface (?)

 Non-spherical  Small sizes  Orbits are very close to Mars  Asaph Hall III  Kepler’s lucky guess

Books  Schneider, Stephen and Arny, Thomas T. Pathways to Astronomy, Second Edition. New York, McGraw-Hill, Web Sites  /2001/dsnyder.7.html /2001/dsnyder.7.html