PHYSICS 20E Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Giovanni Schiaparelli, Flagstaff, Arizona, Axial Tilt
Document Summary
Earth radius ~ 2 x mars radius. Mars radius ~ 2 x moon radius. Rotation period = 24 hours, 37 min. Orbital period = 1. 88 years (because it"s farther away from the sun) Martian seasons are similar to earth seasons (only longer). Average air pressure is 0. 7% that of earth"s. Mixture of frozen h2o (ice) and frozen co2 (dry ice) Sun hits the sides so poles are the colder places. Northern ice caps melt during the northern summer, southern ice caps melt during southern summer. The surface of mars looks like a desert. The idea of intelligent life on mars is common in popular culture. Early studies of mars made people think it might be habitable. By the end of the 18th century, people had seen that: mars had ice caps, mars had tilted rotation axis and seasons (like the earth, mars had a ~25 hour day (similar to earth)
