Mars, Earth encounter coming soon.

Below I copied a post I found on another website that i'm a member of and i'd just like to know if anyone else has heard of this? Its the first I have. The claim that Mars will appear in the sky as large as a full moon seems a bit much to swollow.

Can anyone enlighten me on this?

Wupy


MARS and EARTH--It's coming close
MARS SPECTACULAR!

The Red Planet is about to be spectacular! This month
and next, Earth is catching up with Mars in an
ncounter 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 before it
happens again.

The encounter will culminate on August 27th when Mars
comes to within 34,649,589 miles of Earth 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 it will rise in the east at 10pm. and reach its
azimuth at about 3 a.m.

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 12:30a.m. That's pretty convenient
to see something that no human being 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.


Share this with your children and grandchildren.
NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS AGAIN!!

How is this?

June 6, 2005: By the time you finish reading this sentence, you'll be 25 miles closer to the planet Mars.
Earth is racing toward Mars at a speed of 23,500 mph, which means the red planet is getting bigger and brighter by the minute. In October, when the two planets are closest together, Mars will outshine everything in the night sky except Venus and the Moon. (You're another 50 miles closer: keep reading!)
It's only June, now, but Mars is already eye-catching. You can see it early in the morning, rising before the sun in the eastern sky, shining almost twice as bright as a 1st-magnitude star. A sky map, below, shows where to find Mars on Wednesday morning, June 29th, when it appears pleasingly close to the crescent Moon.

There is a great deal more on the site.
science.nasa.gov...

wow! as large as a full moon?


Why didn't we have something planned for this? we could have launched a couple more rovers and they would be there in no time.


I honestly, can not believe that MARS will be as large as a full moon in the night sky.

impossible!... i could be wrong.

as large as the moon is to the naked eye, when viewing mars with a 75x power telescope.

supposedly.

Thank you for that info Kenshiro2012, that was even better then the stuff I found on the other site.

Wupy

thats sweet! thats cool because its a month before my 16th birthday, and it sucks because its my first day of school. lol

Originally posted by robertfenix
as large as the moon is to the naked eye, when viewing mars with a 75x power telescope.

supposedly.

No, in the first article it says Mars will look as big as the full moon to the naked eye. If you go to the link Kenshiro provided it has a display which shows Mars looking as big as the full moon, even though the moon is only half full at that time.

This could be a really awesome event for the lay people like myself who only watch the stars if an alien invasion has been predicted

Way kewl.

Wupy

Sorry mrwupy, Fenix is right:

At a modest 75-power
magnification

Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked
eye.

From your original post.

EDIT: I forgot to add though, that was what I was think as well when I read the post, and actually was a little disappointed when reality kicked in. Would've been a hell of a sight.

[edit on 6/7/2005 by MCory1]

If it looks as big, it will have similar tidal influences. Scary..but....

Thats a mistake, it's not geometrically possible.

Mars would probably have to be only 500,000 miles or so away, to appear that large..Mars is about twice as large as the moon in diameter.

It's distance is going to be 64 times further away..


Still, It will be a nice bright Golden-red "star"...

From Nasa:

Back on Earth people are going to enjoy watching Mars swell and brighten in the months ahead. By mid-summer, amateur astronomers with backyard telescopes will be able to spot polar ice caps and dust storms and strange dark markings. By autumn, even the least attentive of your neighbors will be remarking on "that bright red thing in the sky." Mark October 31st as the best day of all: Mars will rise at sunset, hang overhead at midnight, and "blaze forth against the dark background of space with a splendor that outshines Sirius and rivals the giant Jupiter himself." That's how astronomer Percival Lowell described a similar close encounter in the 19th century.

At the moons closest point in it's orbit around the earth

# Metric: 363,300 km
# English: 225,700 miles

space.about.com...

On OCT 31 Mars will be

43 million miles (69 million km)

Since Mars is only 1.95 times the size of the moon, I doubt that it will be (optically) the size of the moon but it will still be a spetacular sight to see and one that will be remembered.
For a good demonstration on the size difference check out
ic.arc.nasa.gov...

Wooops! I didn't notice the break in the first story so it looked like it said Mars would be as large as the moon. Now I see my mistake.

Hey, a guy can dream can't he? i was thinking just how cool that would be, a giant red ball floating across the sky like that.

Now I gotta go buy a cheap telescope

Hehehehehehe............

Wupy

Didn't this already happen in 2003 ?
I mean Mars and it's closest approach in a century?

Er, I think so SkinWalker. Someone should check the date of that forum post. All I can find is the links below to the 2003 event. Please provide a link to this years event.

www.space.com...
news.bbc.co.uk...
mars.jpl.nasa.gov...

[edit on 8/6/05 by The Block]

wow!!!

mars is my favorite planet...

i cannot wait!!!

also...

wouldn't this be the ideal time to send some more robots / humans there???

i mean, the shorter the ride the better right???

if only we were ready to...

That's No Moon!

Really?

Damn - I have to take Lots of Photos from this Rare Event.

And hope its going to be a Clear Night sky on that date.

Oh, and a Great Find mrwupy!




[edit on 8/6/05 by Souljah]

Magnified section of an image taken from the last (2003) event.

Sorry, it made me chuckle

Jak

JAK

LOL!



Love it!

Originally posted by SkinWalker
Didn't this already happen in 2003 ?
I mean Mars and it's closest approach in a century?

I thought that was Venus in 2003. There was even a partial eclipse. I could be thinking of something else though. Not sure.

Wupy

Originally posted by they see ALL
also...

wouldn't this be the ideal time to send some more robots / humans there???

i mean, the shorter the ride the better right???

if only we were ready to...

Here you go...

"Mindful of that, NASA plans to launch the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on August 10th, 2005. Because it takes 6+ months to reach Mars, the best time to start the trip is a month or so before closest approach--thus, August. MRO will arrive in March 2006, enter orbit, and begin a 2-year mission to map the red planet in greater detail than ever before.

The spacecraft's high-resolution cameras will be able to discern objects, such as rocks and rovers and crashed Mars landers, less than 1 meter across. A radar sounder will probe for underground water while spectrometers map the distribution of surface minerals. Other instruments will monitor the atmosphere, teaching researchers back on Earth how to forecast martian weather. These are key elements in NASA's plan to eventually send humans to Mars."