Mars: Unveiling the Mystery of the Red Planet's Color

Mars appears red due to nanocrystalline red hematite dust particles in its thin atmosphere and coating the surface, scattering red light, though the redness is shallow.

1. The "redness" of Mars is incredibly shallow; if you dig just the tiniest bit beneath the surface, the redness vanishes.
2. The atmosphere of Mars is always rich with dust, and that dust then provides the atmosphere’s relatively uniform color.
3. Mars doesn’t possess a uniform red color at all; the surface itself is more of an orangey shade of butterscotch overall.
4. Perhaps the notion of “water is responsible for ferric oxides” is a literal red herring after all.
5. If the Martian atmosphere were calm and dust-free, the sky would appear almost completely black with a slight bluish tint, not blue like Earth's sky.