Jun

8

We Are The Martians.

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

June 8, 2007 |

He was, in Roman mythology, the bringer of war. Known as Ares to the ancient Greeks, Mars gave us the name of the month March, when wars were often started or renewed in ancient times.

Depending on where you live, if you step outside at around 5am tomorrow morning and look toward the East you’ll see a crescent Moon, and, next to it, a reddish (or yellowish) object. It’s Mars, our second-closest neighbor.

mars.jpg
Few planets have inspired so much fear and speculation, from H.G. Wells’ War Of The Worlds to Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles to Robert Heinlein’s more Earth-bound Stranger In A Strange Land. Look at Mars the planet, though: smaller than Earth, dry, cold, with a thin atmosphere, it takes 687 of our days to orbit the Sun. And, as far as we know, we’ve fired more probes at Mars than anyone there has fired at us, including NASA’s Phoenix Mars Mission, scheduled for launch some time this summer.

Check the Astronomy section of Weather Underground for help finding Mars in your local night (or morning) sky. It’s not as scary as we’ve been led to believe. And keep looking up.


Comments

1 Comment so far

  1. James on June 29, 2007 12:44 pm

    I liked the title reference. Also when I was growing up (in a town called March) us natives would call ourselves martians.

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