About Mars
Mars is an epic planet. It completes an orbit every 686.98 days and swings within 1.381 AU of the Sun at perihelion.
It is orbited by 2 known moons.
Epic planet 65 EP
Mars
Position computed live · planets
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Live ephemeris
This object moves — fetching its current position…
Score breakdown
· 4 badgesEpic 78 pts → Anomaly
- Major planet +40
- The Red Planet +12
- Has a proper name +8
- Has moons +5
Total score 65
13 more points to reach Anomaly.
Badges
- Major planet · +40
- Has a proper name · +8
- The Red Planet · +12
- Has moons · +5
Trivia
What it actually is
- Its moons. It is orbited by 2 known moons.
Sense of scale
- Against Earth. It is only 53% of Earth's width — you could pack about 6.6 of it inside our planet.
- Ground to cover. Its whole surface adds up to about 144.4 million km² — about the same as Earth's dry land.
- Walk around it. Walking right round its equator, eight hours a day, would take about 17.5 months.
Its true colour
- Why it's red. Its rust colour is literally rust: iron in the surface dust has oxidised, and planet-wide storms spread that dust over everything.
By the numbers
- Size. About 6780 km across.
What's in a name
- Named. Notable enough to have earned a proper name, not just a catalogue number.
Properties
- aphelion au
- 1.666
- color
- #c1440e
- diameter km
- 6780
- eccentricity
- 0.0934
- inclination
- 1.85
- name
- Mars
- named
- yes
- num moons
- 2
- orbital period days
- 686.98
- perihelion au
- 1.3814
- radius km
- 3390
- red planet
- yes
- semi major au
- 1.5237
How to see it
Like any astronomical target, Mars is best seen from a dark site away from city lights, and when it is above the horizon depends on your latitude and the time of year. Because it moves against the background stars, the live position panel on this page tracks where it is right now. The visibility panel above works out tonight's viewing window for your saved location.
Why Mars is an epic planet
Mars scores 65 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 13 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 4 science badges — Major planet, Has a proper name, The Red Planet and Has moons — each earned for a real, measurable property of the object. Rarity on Spacedle is never random: the more remarkable an object's astrophysics, the more badges it collects, the higher it scores, and the rarer it ranks.