It’s the Time of the Season

   Today is the northern hemisphere spring equinox on the planet Mars as the planet transitions from winter to spring during its 684 Earth day orbit around the Sun. Seasons on Mars are marked by the planet’s heliocentric longitude coordinates using the position of Mars along its orbit around the Sun. Each seasonal start/ending point is 90 degrees apart, but because of its elliptical-shaped orbit each Martian season is of varying lengths. At the Martian spring equinox Mars is at 0 degrees longitude.
   I’m not exactly sure why this particular date is used but by international agreement astronomers have selected 11 April, 1955 as 0 degrees for year 1 of this Martian calendar. What this means is that today, 31 July Earth time, is the start of a ‘new year’, the first day of spring for year 32 using the aforementioned calendar system.

Year 32
0 degrees — Spring Equinox — Jul 31 2013
90 degrees — Summer solstice — Feb 15 2014
180 degrees — Fall Equinox — Aug 17 2014
270 degrees — Winter Solstice — Jan 11 2015
Year 33
0 degrees — Spring Equinox — Jun 18 2015

Learn a little (or a lot) more about Mars at the NASA/JPL Mars Curiosity mission web site.

Here is approximately 3 minutes worth of Mars from the Orbit performance.

   
   
   Click here to go to the Qué tal in the Current Skies web site for more observing information.

Filed under: Astronomy, climate, Curiosity on Mars, Mars, Multimedia, NASA, Observing, Planets, seasons, Solar System Exploration, STEM, Universe, Weather Tagged: astronomy, astrophotography, climate, curiosity, mars, martian calendar, martian season, martian spring, nasa, nasa jpl mars, northern hemisphere spring, science, seasons, weather