How populated is the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars?

 Nowhere CLOSE to what the media has prepared us for…

• FACT: The total mass of all of the rocks in the asteroid belt is just 3% of the mass of our Moon.
• FACT: The average distance between two decent sized asteroids is a few million kilometers - the distance between Earth and Moon is a third of a million kilometers.

FICTION:

Not this:

…or this..

…or this:

…or this:

SORRY. BACK TO FACTS:

The reality is more like:

…only with fewer dots!

If you were slap bang in the middle of the asteroid belt, the largest and brightest things you’d see would be the Sun and Jupiter. The odds of you being able to see a single asteroid with naked eye would be almost zero.

Flying through the asteroid belt is no big deal.

ALTHOUGH:

Science has nothing much to say either way about these:

What does the night sky look like on Mars?

 Essentially identical to Earth - except:

1. You’d be able to see Earth up there in the sky as a small light blue-ish dot - and (obviously) you wouldn’t see Mars as just another bright dot because you’re standing on it! Earth would appear somewhat like Venus does to us - you’d see Earth in the sky around dawn and dusk.
2. You might also be able to see the Moon…again, at the right time during the Moon’s phases…which would be different from the phases as seen from Earth depending on the time of year on Earth and Mars at the time.
3. You’d also be able to see Mars’ two tiny moons Phobos and Deimos which would have phases, as our Moon does. Phobos zips across the sky about three times a day - so you could be able to see it more than once every night - while Deimos orbits once every 30 hours - so there will be nights when you can’t see it at all. This is a time-lapse made by the “Spirit” rover.

Because of Mars’ very thin atmosphere - your view of the night sky won’t be inhibited by nearby cities (assuming there are any nearby cities!) due to “sky glow” - so you should be able to see the Milky Way and WAY more stars than you can see here from most inhabited areas on Earth.

It’s also notable that sunrises and sunsets on Mars are weirdly opposite to Earth. Instead of blue skies with orange sunsets - Mars has orange skies with blue sunsets. That’s going to take some getting used to!

I wonder how much this will confuse us in to thinking that it’s daytime when in fact it’s dawn or dusk?

These kinds of human instinctual-level thing will probably be only properly understood once people are living there.

Certainly we could have problems getting to sleep because of the blue light levels…we see that here on Earth if you watch too much TV or other screens when you should be getting ready to go to bed.

But doubtless we could arrange for light levels in the habitats of Mars to change color in an Earth-like manner in order to solve that problem.

Why don't Mars and the Moon have mountains?

 How can you have a vague interest in the solar system and planets (enough to post a question on Quora about them) and not have heard of Olympus Mons?!

Meet Olympus Mons (Mount Olympus) on Mars, at 22 km high, the largest mountain and volcano in the solar system:

It’s a volcano the size of France:

2 1/2 times as high as Mount Everest:

The Moon also has mountains (these are hills but hey, what a cool photo):

The highest mountains on the Moon are over 10 km high, making them significantly taller than any on Earth (Selenian summit shown in green):

Selenian summit is 10,786 m as measured from the Lunar mean surface (the Moon’s equivalent of sea level based on its average radius of 1,734.4 km). This is higher than Mauna Kea as measured from base to peak (10,210 m), and much higher than Everest (8,848 m), so it’s safe to say the Moon and Mars have bigger mountains than Earth.

Even if they’re formed by impactors and volcanoes, rather than plate tectonics.

What are some mind-blowing facts about the planet Mars?

 Mars is as mysterious as it gets.

• The planet is for the most part orange.

The surface of Mars has an orange-reddish color because its soil has iron oxide or rust particles in it.

• The Gravity is not strong enough to hold the oxygen atom close to the ground like earth. Mars, is less than half Earth’s size and around one-tenth Earth’s mass. Less mass means less gravitational pull.
• It has a Valley scratch on it’s surface that is 4 miles deep. Deeper than any ground Valley on earth. This is call the Valles Marineris. If on Earth it would be longer than the entire United States

• Mars is also home to the largest mountain in the solar system. Olympus Mons is a volcano that has a height of over 21.9 kilometers (13.6 miles or 72,000 feet). It is defined by a massive cliff many kilometers (several miles) tall. At this location, it is nearly 7 kilometers (7 miles or 23,000 feet) tall. It is so big it is easy to see from space.

• Not everything is orange on Mars. It has stunningly gorgeous blue sand dunes. This is actually a color enhance photo of an area of mars. The actual color is more bland, however there are distinct differences in the sand which helps to allow the coloration. It is not orange.

• High-Altitude Water Acts as an Atmospheric Escape Route for Martian Hydrogen. The possible causes are Mars’ elliptical orbit causes the intensity of the sunlight reaching Mars to vary by 40 percent during a Martian year. Seasonal effects that controls how much water vapor is present in the lower atmosphere, as well as variations in how much water makes it into the upper atmosphere. The 11-year cycle of the sun’s activity is another likely factor.

• A sand storm on Mars can engulf the entire planet

More Facts:

• Mars has two moons Phobos and Deimos. Phobos is much larger than Deimos, however both are small, which is the why they are not spherical in shape. Phobos has a diameter of 22.2 km (13.8 mi) and a mass of 1.08×1016 kg, while Deimos measures 12.6 km (7.8 mi) across, with a mass of 2.0×1015 kg

• While the earth’s day length is a average close to 24 hours, March 4th is (24 hours, 0 minutes, 0.0003935 seconds), the average length of a day on Mars is 24 hours, 37 minutes and 22 seconds. What is mind blowing about this is when man goes to space their body clock changes. When not exposed to light, mans body clock extends beyond 24 hours and closer to the Martian day.
• Mars has methane in the atmosphere and scientist does not know where it came from.
• The tilt of Mars has a very similar tilt to Earth’s 23 degree tilt. Mars tilt is 25 degrees.

What are some less known facts about Mars?

 Here are a few less known facts about Mars:

• It can get pretty warm on the surface of Mars, up to 20°C (68°F) during the summer.
• The polar caps of Mars consist of carbondioxide (dry ice).

• Mars has the largest confirmed impact crater in the Solar System, with a size of 3,300 km (half the planet’s diameter). Utopia Planitia

Utopia Planitia is in the upper right.

• There are tornados on Mars (more precise: dust devils), and they can get very large, reaching heights of several kilometers. But because the atmosphere of Mars is very thin, you could stand inside such a tornado and would not be blown away (you could barely feel the wind).

• Mars has volcanoes, including the largest volcano in the Solar System Olympus Mons. But its slope is so shallow that you could not see to the bottom if you stood at its top, due to the curvature of the planet.

• Few people know that Olympus Mons is not only very high, but also almost as large as France.

• Mars once had a much warmer climate, with a magnetic field, a denser atmosphere and liquid water on the surface (possibly harbouring life). When it lost its magnetic field, solar wind stripped away the atmosphere, and without the atmosphere, liquid water could no longer exist on the surface.

• You could see the Earth and the Moon from the surface of Mars with your naked eye.

• Mars has clouds, and dunes (both of which are moving)

• And finally: Mars is the only known planet inhabited solely by robots.

There is still a large gap between Mars and Jupiter. Could there be a possibility that a new planet will be discovered there?

 No. First of all there’s already something there called the “Asteroid belt”:

Secondly there’s not enough material there to form a planet.

And lastly if there was something there we’d have discovered it by now. That is after all how we located Neptune.

There’s planets we can see with the naked eye namely Mercury, Venus, Earth as we’re standing on it, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus. Uranus is a special case as it’s only visible when at opposition. In other words when we’re at the closest point in our orbit to it and it’s on the same side of the Sun as us. This only occurs once a year. But we “discovered” it in the 18th century and can see it with telescopes.

But as they looked at it they noticed that it wasn’t exactly in the right spot. It was slightly off. We had learned from Newton that gravity affects other objects so that must mean something big was farther away. They did the calculations, worked out it’s location and about 70 years later we discovered Neptune.

Mars and Jupiter are much closer. If there was a planet out there we’d have seen it by now. And if not we’d have detected it through it’s gravity affecting either Mars or some of the asteroids in the belt.

So no. There’s no planet out there between Mars and Jupiter.