Mars as big as the moon??!?!?
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Mars as big as the moon??!?!?
My wife said someone sent her an email that said that this month Mars would be closer than it has ever been in the past 5000 years and will apear to be as big as the moon sometime near the end of the month.
Anyone heard about this?
Anyone heard about this?
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Originally Posted by ryball
My wife said someone sent her an email that said that this month Mars would be closer than it has ever been in the past 5000 years and will apear to be as big as the moon sometime near the end of the month.
Anyone heard about this?
Anyone heard about this?
By the way, if your hand is bigger than your face, you have cancer.
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I have that email. Here are the contents. It came via a WORD document
NEVER AGAIN IN YOUR LIFETIME
The Red Planet is about to be spectacular!
This month and next, Earth is catching up with Mars in 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 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 10p.m. 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
The Red Planet is about to be spectacular!
This month and next, Earth is catching up with Mars in 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 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 10p.m. 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
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I scoped it out online, it's a hoax. The original email was sent back in 2003 and has somehow resurfaced. Back in '03 Mars was as close as it will get in so many thousands of years, and something similar is happening this year, but not on the magnitude noted in the email. Guess the moon will have to do.
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Not unless you have a time machine
Is this possible. Back in 2003 it happened
http://www.snopes.com/science/mars.asp
http://www.snopes.com/science/mars.asp
Originally Posted by snopes
Claim: The planet Mars will make a once-in-our-lifetimes remarkably close approach to Earth in August.
Origins: The piece quoted above is another example of an item that was once true but is now being circulated again, long after the events it describes have come to pass. This article was relevant back in 2003, but it is not applicable now, two years later.
Mars did make an extraordinarily close approach to Earth which culminated on 27 August 2003, when the red planet came within 35 million miles (or 56 million kilometers) of Earth, its nearest approach to us in almost 60,000 years. At that time, Mars appeared approximately 6 times larger and 85 times brighter in the sky than it does ordinarily. (The message quoted above was often reproduced with an unfortunate line break in the middle of the second sentence of the second paragraph, leaving some readers with the mistaken impression that Mars would "look as large as the full moon to the naked eye" and not realizing that the statement only applied to those using viewing Mars through a scope with 75-power magnification.)
Origins: The piece quoted above is another example of an item that was once true but is now being circulated again, long after the events it describes have come to pass. This article was relevant back in 2003, but it is not applicable now, two years later.
Mars did make an extraordinarily close approach to Earth which culminated on 27 August 2003, when the red planet came within 35 million miles (or 56 million kilometers) of Earth, its nearest approach to us in almost 60,000 years. At that time, Mars appeared approximately 6 times larger and 85 times brighter in the sky than it does ordinarily. (The message quoted above was often reproduced with an unfortunate line break in the middle of the second sentence of the second paragraph, leaving some readers with the mistaken impression that Mars would "look as large as the full moon to the naked eye" and not realizing that the statement only applied to those using viewing Mars through a scope with 75-power magnification.)
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Originally Posted by NYImpreza
I scoped it out online, it's a hoax. The original email was sent back in 2003 and has somehow resurfaced. Back in '03 Mars was as close as it will get in so many thousands of years, and something similar is happening this year, but not on the magnitude noted in the email. Guess the moon will have to do.
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I am not going to pretend to be some bad assed astronomer, but I did get to see Mars through our telescope in 2003 and it was very bright, but without a telescope ot still looked like a star in the sky, albiet a bright one. The best planet to see right now is Jupiter, you can even see the moons right now, like awesome.
Any $200 telescope should do.
Any $200 telescope should do.
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reading comprehesion is not so good is it? The snopes article said that through a 75x telescope mars will look the size of the moon with the naked eye.
mars + 75x telescope = moon + naked eye.
and that was in 2003.
mars + 75x telescope = moon + naked eye.
and that was in 2003.
Originally Posted by illy
I am not going to pretend to be some bad assed astronomer, but I did get to see Mars through our telescope in 2003 and it was very bright, but without a telescope ot still looked like a star in the sky, albiet a bright one. The best planet to see right now is Jupiter, you can even see the moons right now, like awesome.
Any $200 telescope should do.
Any $200 telescope should do.
i went w/ the wifey to one of her field trips for her astronomy class at sac state...they setup all these telescopes in Rescue last spring...we saw saturns rings and jupiter & it's moons, mars and the moon...very cool stuff...
they look like little models hanging out there...
the professor had this green laser star pointer thing that he could point to stars w/ and you could see the beam aming up into the sky and tell what stasr he was "pointing" to...was super cool...but man was there some trekie nerds in her class...straight out of wierd science from the 80's...expected to see pocket protectors. :rotfl:
they look like little models hanging out there...
the professor had this green laser star pointer thing that he could point to stars w/ and you could see the beam aming up into the sky and tell what stasr he was "pointing" to...was super cool...but man was there some trekie nerds in her class...straight out of wierd science from the 80's...expected to see pocket protectors. :rotfl:
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Ya my uncle knows all about that stuff and where everything is in the sky. He showed me Saturn and its rings, Jupiter and Mars, and also the closet galaxy. It's crazy because everything looks exactly how they say it does LOL, Saturns rings look badass. Jupiter basically looked like the sun with a lighter color dot in it. The closets galaxy was crazy when you look through the telescop all it looks like is a little Haze in the sky