During our time in Montreal we went to the Rio Tinto Alcan Planetarium. The planetarium has two dome-shaped theaters. They played two shows. One of them was about asteroids and the other was about Mars. I preferred the film about Mars because it had actual footage from the Mars rover Curiosity. The museum’s artifacts included asteroids and moon rocks.
Mars is only half the size of Earth. It is the 4th planet from the Sun. It is red due to the iron and rust in its soil. Mars is covered in craters formed by asteroids. Mars has many asteroid collisions because there is an asteroid belt in the solar system between Mars and Jupiter. The Valles Marineres Canyon is 3 times deeper than the Grand Canyon and about as long as Canada. Mars has enough ice on the polar caps that if it were to thaw it would cover the planet with 11 m of water. Curiosity took pictures of dry river basins and rounded pebbles suggesting that there has been liquid water on Mars in the past. This probably occurred when volcanic activity was on Mars and the temperature was higher. Olympus mons Is the highest mountain in the solar system. It is 25 km high (3x higher than mount Everest). It is almost as high as the Martian atmosphere and it is the only point on the planet that does not get covered by dust storms. Mars has two small moons called phobos and demos. During spring and summer, basalt sand and CO2 gas form geysers because the temperature rises to -5c allowing C02 to vaporize.
olympus mons
the rio tinto planetarium
Thanks for the interesting facts about Mars... sounds like a cool museum!
ReplyDeleteI did not know all these interesting things about Mars. I especially found the canyon & the Olympus Mons fascinating. They are both ginormous!!
ReplyDeleteI did not know all these interesting things about Mars. I especially found the canyon & the Olympus Mons fascinating. They are both ginormous!!
ReplyDelete