Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Laboratory >

Mars

12:39 / 08.08.03

Close Encounter With Mars

"Never again in your (or my) lifetime will the Red Planet be so spectacular. This month and next Earth is catching up with Mars, an encounter that will culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history. The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287. Due to the way Jupiter's gravity tugs on Mars and perturbs its orbit, astronomers can only be certain that Mars has not come this close to Earth in the last 5,000 years but it may be as long as 60,000 years.
The encounter will culminate on August 27th when Mars comes to within 34,649,589 miles and will be (next to the moon) the brightest object in the night sky. It will attain a magnitude of -2.9 and will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide. At a modest 75-power magnification Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye.
Mars will be easy to spot. At the beginning of August Mars will rise in the east at 10 p.m. and reach its azimuth at about 3 a.m. But by the end of August when the two planets are closest, Mars will rise at nightfall and reach its highest point in the sky at 12:30 a.m. That's pretty convenient when it comes to seeing something that no human has seen in recorded history.

So, mark your calendar at the beginning of August to see Mars grow
progressively brighter and brighter throughout the month. No one alive today will ever see this again."

20:06 / 12.08.03

If the Martians fancy having another go, we have even nastier germs than we had 100 years ago...

14:42 / 14.08.03

I looked at the almost-completely-full moon two days ago (Monday August 10th) at about 10 pm in NYC and I saw a reddish-tinted star-like-thing in the sky quite a bit to the left of the moon but sort of parallel with it - - I wondered if this was Mars. I don't know nearly enough about astronomy to say. Maybe it was the North Star. I don't know.

Professor Silly

15:05 / 14.08.03

It couldn't have been the North Star, as the moon and planets all appear to travel through the astrological constellations while the star Polaris (the North Star) appears much further north in the sky, in Ursa Minor.

On Monday the Moon overlapped the constellation Capricorn, while Mars appeared in Pisces; this would put the two bodies in question about 51º apart, or about a quarter of the visible night sky (we can see half the sky at any time, or 180º from horizon to horizon). Unfortunately, by my calculations, Mars should have appeared to the right of the moon, near the southern most point in the sky. I might be off on that though....

Since then they've gotten closer and closer to each other (Mars and the Moon), overlapping in Pisces sometime today. This will make Mars harder to see right now, but it will get easier with each day from here out, as the distance between them will now steadily increase through the rest of the month....

21:25 / 14.08.03

Yep, saw it last night and drunkenly tried to photograph it. Fool.
Anyway, try using the Distant Suns (distantsuns.com) shareware package to tell you where it ought to be. It was right beside the full moon last night. Why do I not own binoculars?

01:01 / 15.08.03

Happened to catch the little red guy yesterday and it is a bit more visible than usual. Looking forward to Saturday so I can get closer to it with my father's reflection telescope. I don't know if he picked up an optic connection for it so he could link his mac to it, but if he does, I'll try and post some pics.

Professor Silly

15:25 / 15.08.03

Upon further reflection I have realized that my math was off--Mars would have appeared to the left of the moon last Monday, and should be to the right of the moon for the rest of the month...tee hee hee.