It’s springtime – on Mars, anyway – because today is the spring equinox for the Red Planet’s northern hemisphere.

Like the seasons on Earth, the seasons on Mars are the result of the planet’s tilt on its axis. In fact, the two planets are tilted at almost the same angle. So the north pole dips toward the Sun at the start of northern summer, while the south pole dips sunward at the start of northern winter. The equinoxes are half way between those points.

But there are some differences between the seasons on Earth and Mars. Mars’s orbit is more stretched out than Earth’s orbit, so there’s a bigger difference in the planet’s distance from the Sun. Mars’s distance varies by about 26 million miles.

That has a couple of effects. For one thing, it creates a big disparity between the seasons in the northern and southern hemispheres. Mars is farthest from the Sun during southern winter, and closest during summer. That means southern winters are colder than northern winters, while summers are warmer.

And second, Mars moves fastest when it’s close to the Sun, and slowest when it’s far away. That causes a big difference in the length of the seasons. Northern spring is the longest – it lasts 194 Mars days. Northern fall is the shortest – just 142 days.

Look for bright orange Mars climbing into good view in late evening, and high in the southwest at first light – a world that’s springing into a new season.

Script by Damond Benningfield