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Mars Nears for Best Viewing in Years

By Joe Rao,
Posted: 2007-09-30 15:08:16
Filed Under: Science News
Space.com


(Sept. 28) - Mars is coming!

You've probably heard that line before – no doubt fairly recently, thanks to a bogus e-mail that unfortunately received wide circulation on the Internet this summer with promises of Mars being as big as the full moon.

Photo Gallery: Mars Up Close

NASA and Hubble Heritage Team / AP

Mars is shown in an incredibly sharp 2001 photo made from the Hubble Space Telescope. On Wednesday, the planet will appear with a yellow-orange tint seven degrees above and to the right of the moon.

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But this fact is absolutely true: Mars, the only planet whose surface we can see in any detail from the Earth, is now moving toward the best viewing position it will provide to us until the year 2014. Planet watchers have already begun readying their telescopes.

If you haven't seen it, it will be well worth looking for the red planet next week, even though you'll have to wait until after midnight to see it well.

Mars is currently midway between the zodiacal constellations of Taurus, the Bull and Gemini, the Twins and during this week it will rise shortly before 11 p.m. local daylight time. There is certainly no mistaking it once it comes up over the east-northeast horizon. Presently shining like a pumpkin-hued, zero magnitude star, Mars is currently tied for fifth place (with Vega) among the 21 brightest stars.

But as it continues to approach our Earth in the coming weeks and months, Mars will only be getting brighter: it will surpass Sirius, the brightest star in the sky by Dec. 9 and during the latter half of December it will even almost match Jupiter in brilliance.

Late next Wednesday night (or more precisely, early on Thursday morning), Mars will hover about 7-degrees above and to the right of the last quarter moon as they rise above the east-northeast horizon (your clenched fist held at arm's length is roughly 10-degrees in width). As you will see for yourself, the so-called "Red Planet" actually will appear closer to a yellow-orange tint – the same color of a dry desert under a high sun.

Photo Gallery: Amazing Space Photos

Reuters / NASA

A volcano on the north pole of Jupiter's fourth largest moon, Io, spews a giant plume of dust 200 miles into space.

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How close?

Every 26 months, or so, Earth makes a close approach to Mars, as our smaller, swifter orbit "overtakes" Mars around the sun. Because both the orbits of Mars and Earth are mildly elliptical, some close approaches between the two planets are closer than others.

This current apparition of Mars will be nowhere near as spectacular as the oft-referred approach of August 2003 when the planet came closer to Earth than it had in nearly 60,000-years.

Rather, on this upcoming occasion, Mars will come closest to Earth on the evening of December 18th (at around 6:46 p.m. Eastern Standard Time).

The planet will then lie 54.8 million miles (88.2 million kilometers) from Earth as measured from center to center. Mars will arrive at opposition to the sun (rising at sunset, setting at sunrise) six days later on Christmas Eve, December 24th.

How big?

That recent Martian e-mail message – a hyperbole which was widely circulated for a fourth consecutive year – lead people to believe, with liberal use of exclamation marks, that on Aug. 27, Mars would appear as bright as (or as large as) that night's full moon in the night sky. The subject header urged viewers to prepare to view "Two Full Moons."

It was amazing (and a little disturbing) to see just how many people actually believed that Mars could loom so large in our sky. But the truth is that even when at its absolute closest possible approach to Earth, Mars can appear no larger than 1/72 as big as the moon; to the unaided eye it would appear as nothing more than an extremely bright, non-twinkling star.

Space News From Space.com

When it comes closest to Earth on December 18th of this year, Mars' apparent disk diameter will be equal to 15.9 arc seconds. To get an idea of just how large this is, wait until darkness falls this week and if you have a telescope, check out Jupiter, gleaming in the southwestern sky; it'll appear about 35 arc seconds across.

In contrast, Mars' disk will appear less than half as big as Jupiter's when the Red Planet comes closest to Earth later this year. While this may sound small, keep in mind that this is still atypically large for Mars. In fact, from November 30th through Jan. 5, 2008, Mars' apparent size will be larger than at any time until April 2014. Around the time that Mars is closest, amateurs with telescopes as small as 4-inches and magnifying above 120-power should be able to make out some dusky markings on the small yellow-orange disk, and perhaps the bright white polar cap.

Size isn't everything

From Dec. 15 through Dec. 29, Mars will blaze at magnitude -1.6, a bit brighter than Sirius, but just slightly inferior to Jupiter. Mars will still be positioned between Taurus and Gemini, at a rather high declination of about +27-degrees.

So almost as if to compensate for its relatively small apparent size, Mars will literally soar in the night sky of late-December.

When it reaches its highest point in the sky at around midnight local time, its altitude will be 70-degrees at Seattle, 76-degrees for New York, and an exceptional 83-degrees at Los Angeles. Meanwhile, amateur and professional astronomers stationed in southern Texas and central Florida will see Mars pass directly, or very nearly overhead!

(c) 1999-2007 Imaginova Corp. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

2007-09-29 20:27:20
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2554 comments

dalker10 10:21:00 PM Nov 30 2007

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A manned mission to mars would be very expensive unless it was one-way..........a rather morbid thought but not so bad considering some terminal or devoted people may not mind living their lives out there for the glory.

xgaming25legendx 11:46:03 AM Oct 13 2007

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The axis of evil is plainly identified in Revelations. The nations of the Earth had best stop fighting and unite for the greatest battle in history. Read your bible!
^^
....the greatest battle has nothing to do with mars.
Its against ISRAEL

xgaming25legendx 11:45:58 AM Oct 13 2007

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The axis of evil is plainly identified in Revelations. The nations of the Earth had best stop fighting and unite for the greatest battle in history. Read your bible!
^^
....the greatest battle has nothing to do with mars.
Its against ISRAEL

dturtledove 11:19:00 PM Oct 05 2007

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SO.....HEY EVERYONE! CHECK OUT THIS SITE!...........WWW.AMAZINGDREAMCATCHERS.COM
PRETTY COOL!! THERE'S DOLPHINS, PEACOCKS, PEACE SIGNS, STARS, MOONS, MANY OTHERS!

legarevillegal 02:38:12 PM Oct 05 2007

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Let's enjoy it before they mine it or put a Disney World on it and turn it into a tourist attraction

algorehox 10:39:26 AM Oct 05 2007

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The first high-definition video of Earth from beyond the planet's orbit has just been made by a Japanese satellite on its way to the moon.

The imagery was taken by the lunar explorer Kaguya, launched by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) on Sept. 14 (Japan Standard Time). The onboard high-definition television, developed by the Japan Broadcasting Corporation, captured the eight-minute video about 68,350 miles (110,000 kilometers) away from Earth.

The video has not been released, but in a still shot taken from the footage, the west coast of South America is seen, awash in daylight.

Kaguya is Japan's first lunar explorer. It is also known as SELENE (Selenological and Engineering Explorer) and is the largest lunar mission since the Apollo program. Kaguya will investigate the entire moon in order to determine its chemical composition, surface and subsurface structure, the remnants of its magnetic field and its gravity field.

ric7329 08:54:21 PM Oct 04 2007

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i am looking forward to the aspect of mars provided by the interactions of our different orbits

alan3903 08:27:57 PM Oct 04 2007

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lets enjoy mars before the apes ruin it

Wanngogt19201 06:14:15 PM Oct 04 2007

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MORTGAGE INDUSTRY EXPOSED!!!!!
What ever borrower must know
http://www.rmdirect.net

kbmullikin 12:42:00 AM Oct 04 2007

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evryone knows there are aliens on other planets but whatever you want to call them that does not make them priority in our lives, what we really need to worry about is life on THIS planet. when life on others show up then we can worry about that.

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