Seasons on Mars

Mars experiences solstices and equinoxes just like Earth. They're associated with seasons on the red planet, just like they are on Earth. However, Martian seasons aren't anything like Earth's. The atmosphere on Mars is very thin and contains a different blend of gases. Mars also has a more elliptical orbit causing the planet's distance from the sun to vary much more. These cause temperatures to rise and fall through a bigger range of temperatures than on Earth. However, most of Mars stays far colder than most of Earth.

On Mars, the northern hemisphere spring lasts seven Earth months. Summer lasts six months, fall lasts five months, and winter lasts four months. The seasons vary in length so much because the planet is in the slowest part of its orbit in the spring and summer and the fastest in the fall and winter. The opposite is true for the seasons in the southern hemisphere where winter is longer than summer.

For centuries, astronomers have watched the polar ice caps on Mars grow and shrink. As the pole that has been tilted away from the sun returns to sunlight, a large white area appears. It shrinks and disappears as that pole continues to tip toward the sun. The Martian polar ice caps aren't made of water ice like Earth's. They are frozen carbon dioxide. Most of the planet's atmosphere is carbon dioxide and the poles take turns getting cold enough to freeze the gas out of the air. So much of the gas freezes and thaws over the course of a Martian year, spacecraft that have visited the planet have measured a 25% thinning of the air when the ice caps are largest.

Here are when the equinoxes and solstices on Mars occur from 2010 through 2029.