Most people experience the four familiar seasons on Earth: winter, spring, summer, and autumn. Surprisingly, seasonal changes also happen on other planets, although they can differ vastly from each other.
What Causes Seasons?
In the Solar System, the seasons on the planets are largely due to the difference between the maximum and minimum temperatures on each planet. The combined influence of several factors causes this difference.
Seasonal changes happen due to a planet's rotation time and distance from the Sun. If a planet is close to the Sun, the influence of its rays will be much greater than on planets far away. Meanwhile, planets with long rotation times have a much longer daytime and night-time than planets with short rotation times. If the Sun remains in the sky for a long time, half of the planet will become much hotter than if the Sun is in the sky for a short time. Similarly, long nights will cause much lower temperatures than short nights since half of the planet is in darkness.
Another factor that contributes to the occurrence of seasons is the planet's axial tilt. There are planets with moderate tilt, like Earth and Mars, and those with large tilt, such as Uranus. These differences in axial tilts will have a big seasonal variation in the length of day and night, especially at higher latitudes.
Lastly, seasons are also affected by the orbital eccentricity of the planet. The more elliptical the orbit of a planet, the more variation there will be in temperature as the planet revolves around the Sun.
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Seasons in Different Planets
It seems impossible to distinguish seasons in Mercury because its axial tilt is only 0.03 degrees. It also rotates thrice in two years around its highly elliptical orbit. As a result, the Sun sometimes appears to be moving backward from this planet.
On the red planet, seasonal changes are greater than we see here. This is because Mars has a greater axial tilt and variable distance from the Sun on its eccentric orbit. Mars can get as warm as 70 degrees Fahrenheit during the summer, while it can be as cold as -234 degrees Fahrenheit during the winter. Our neighbor also has more of a difference in the length of seasons. Here on Earth, seasons are evenly spaced between 90 and 93 days, but they drag on more on Mars. Spring lasts the longest at 194 days on this planet, while winter is the shortest at 154 days.
Like Earth, the orbit of Uranus is nearly circular, so it keeps a similar distance from the Sun all year. However, the tilt of Uranus is almost three and a half times greater than Earth. This results in 20-year-long seasons and unusual weather.
A quarter of a year in Uranus is met with the Sun shining directly on one pole for a long, hot summer while plunging the other into a long, dark, and frigid winter. When the Sun finally returns, its warmth helps trigger springtime thunderstorms the size of North America.
As for the other planets, the shorter orbit of Venus allows it to have the shortest season in the solar system, which ranges between 55-58 days. Seasons are also three years long on Jupiter, seven years on Saturn, and more than 40 years on Neptune. Meanwhile, the axial tilt of Saturn and Neptune are very similar to ours, so even if seasons are longer in these gas giants, the seasonal changes are about as noticeable as here on Earth.
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