Is it snowing in your city? Satellites let you see colorful snowflakes

We know that beautiful snowflakes are formed by water molecules under the influence of cold air, forming crystals and falling to the ground. However, have you ever thought about whether it snows on other planets? If it snows on other planets, are the snowflakes also white? Are the snowflakes there so beautiful? Next, let's take a look together!

Snow on Earth

I believe everyone is very familiar with the snow on Earth. Maybe even a primary school student can tell you how snow came about.

Satellite captures snow on Earth

Snow is a natural phenomenon in which water or ice condenses in the air and then falls to the ground. Snowflakes are colorless and light hexagonal crystals. There is a saying that "flowers of plants have five vertices, but snowflakes have six vertices." The size of a snowflake is usually between 0.05 and 4.6 mm, and each weighs only 0.2 to 0.5 grams. The structure of a snowflake changes easily with temperature, and it is varied and wonderful.

The vast expanse of snow-capped earth always gives people a sense of spiritual purification and openness. From space, the earth covered in a white winter coat looks like a crystal clear magic ball, especially the white polar caps at the north and south poles of the earth, which are simply beautiful.

Io's "snow" is magnificent

Io is the closest of Jupiter's four Galilean satellites and the celestial body with the most intense volcanic activity discovered in the solar system so far, even more intense than the volcanic activity on Earth.

Io has many similarities with the terrestrial planets. Its surface is also composed of silicate lava, but according to data observed by Galileo, its core may be composed of iron sulfide.

Normally, volcanic activity heats sulfur dioxide below the surface to a molten state and then ejects it into the cold vacuum. On Io, however, sulfur dioxide quickly cools and solidifies, crystallizing into thin flakes. Most of the flakes fall back to the surface of Io under the action of gravity, just like a heavy snowfall. However, these sulfur dioxide "snowflakes" are yellow, a magnificent and beautiful sight.

Io covered in sulfur dioxide snow

Apart from volcanoes, there are only some ordinary mountains, sulfur lakes, calderas hundreds of kilometers deep, and low-viscosity liquids flowing for hundreds of kilometers (probably liquid sulfur or silicates). These surface landscapes and compounds have a variety of different colors, forming Io's unique and varied appearance.

Snow on Mars is very capricious. It falls whenever it wants, regardless of the season.

Mars is a red planet that looks fiery on the outside, but it also has the secret of snowfall.

According to scientists, the magical Mars snows in both winter and summer. However, the snowy areas in winter are mainly concentrated in the mid-latitudes between the equator and the poles of Mars, while snowflakes only fall in the poles in summer.

Mars, with snowflakes floating on it, looks like it is wrapped in a layer of gauze as thin as a cicada's wing and shrouded in mist against the backdrop of the fiery red ground. This is because the snowflakes on Mars are made of solidified carbon dioxide gas, commonly known as "dry ice snowflakes", which are as big as red blood cells in human blood and are completely invisible to the naked eye.

Mars' polar caps

Research by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States shows that the snow grains at the South Pole of Mars are slightly smaller than those at the North Pole. However, although both are "white snow", the "snow" on Mars is not the same as that on Earth.

First of all, the snow on Earth is solid water, while the "snow" on Mars is solid carbon dioxide (very little water). This is because Mars is dry and the temperature is much lower than that on Earth, and carbon dioxide "freezes" at minus 125 degrees Celsius. Mars is currently the only planet in the solar system where the "dry ice snowfall" phenomenon has been discovered, and the amount of snowfall is enough to form snow accumulation. As early as 2008, NASA also observed snowfall composed of water ice at the north pole of Mars, which is real snowfall.

Snow on Mars

Secondly, the diameter of snowflakes on Earth is generally between 0.5 and 3.0 mm, while the diameter of "snow" on Mars is generally only 4 to 22 microns, which is completely invisible to the naked eye. Therefore, the snowfall on Mars looks a bit like fog on Earth.

It is speculated that the reason why the snowflakes on Mars are so small is that carbon dioxide needs to attach to sand and dust to form crystals. Sand and dust are equivalent to the "seeds" of snowflakes. There is a lot of sand and dust on Mars, and the dust snatches snowflakes from each other, so the snowflake particles are very small.

In addition, Mars not only has "snow" but also "avalanches". In spring, the sunlight will accelerate the sublimation of carbon dioxide, causing ice, dust and soil to break away from the surface of the Martian cliffs, forming the "avalanche" phenomenon on Mars.

Avalanche on Mars

The snow on Triton is very girly and full of pink memories

Triton is the largest of Neptune's satellites and one of the coldest bodies in the Solar System, with a complex geological history and a relatively young surface.

Triton's surface is primarily composed of frozen nitrogen, but also contains dry ice (carbon dioxide), water ice, carbon monoxide ice, and methane.

As Neptune's orbit around the sun repeats, and due to the geological activity of Triton itself, liquid nitrogen and methane on its surface repeatedly evaporate and freeze.

When these liquid substances sprayed into the sky condense, they fall down to form a very "girly" pink snow. This dreamy pink girl series of snow scenes will definitely leave people wanting more.

Triton's surface is covered with pink snow

At present, there are only a handful of planets discovered that can have snow. Let us take a look at the colorful "snow" scenes in the universe taken by detection satellites and feel the "snow" atmosphere.