What colour is Mars?

Short answer: Red.

Mars
Mars photo by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2003.

Long answer: Mars usually looks red as seen from Earth. With the naked eye it looks like a red star, in fact it's only one of about about three easily-visible stars that are obviously red. Sometimes the redness is less obvious, and occasionally it may even appear yellow-orange if there's a big dust storm on the planet.

Photos of Mars tend to show it as brownish red.

On the surface of Mars there's a definite red theme but it's not all red, and it's not always as strongly red as you might think. A lot of the terrain is brown or grey, with sprinklings of blue and other colours.

Mars
The surface of Mars, photographed by the Mars rover Spirit in 2005.

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Author: Dave Owen

TE AWAMUTU SPACE CENTRE
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