Is there a Mars event this month?

Question

I have received an email saying about how Mars will be as big as the moon. However, I have another person who says this is a fake. Is there something happening this month?

Answer 1

You are not the only one who got that e-mail !

It is an e-mail hoax that is going around and the hoaxers are having a laugh at your expense. Central to the hoax is the Baron Von Munchausen attention-grabbing story that Mars will look as big as our Moon. Poppycock!

It is based on a gross distortion of what happened in 2003 (see the CNN News story below).

Which would you rather believe: an anonymous, unsolicited e-mail or the official NASA website?

Like Cassy C I went to the NASA Website, This is what I found on the NASA Kids bit of it:

"View in 2006
Mars begins the year as a moderately bright orange star in the constellation Aries. It will grow fainter through the end of summer, when it will disappear in the Sun's glare. Mars will re-emerge in the morning sky in late December. In March, it will pass quite close to Aldebaran, the star that marks the “eye” of Taurus, the bull. Mars and Aldebaran will look like twins, with near-identical color and brightness."

You don't need to be a genius to work out that if it is getting fainter it is getting further away, and if it is disappearing into the sun's glare that can only be because it is on the far side of the sun from us i.e. Mars' position in its orbit is 180 degrees away from our position in our orbit and we are pretty well the maximum possible distance apart in August 2006.

If you know (and you can easily look this up) that the Martian Year is 1.88 Earth Years then again you don't have to be a genius to work out that the one time it WON'T be near to us is an exact number of twelvemonths since the last time it was close to us in August 2003, We will be in roughly the same place as we were 3 years ago, but Mars will only have done approx 1,6 orbits (1.5957 in fact) around the sun in that time, which explains why it is now on the far side of the sun and at about the farthest distance away it gets,

The absurd idea that Mars could possibly look the same size as the Moon can easily be refuted. At its closest approach it is 35 million miles away, whereas the Moon averages 238,000 miles away i.e. the distances are in ratio >140:1.

The diameters are in ratio 2:1 however (Mars has a diameter of 6780 kilometres and the Moon of 3474 kilometres) and so the areas of the discs they present to the naked eye are in ratio 4:1 (pi R^2: pi r^2, where R = 2r)

So, think about it: how can the number of arc seconds that Mars' disc presents to the naked eye possibly be the same as the number of arc seconds that the Moon's disc presents? If the disc is 4 times the size of the Moon's disc, Mars would have to be only four times as far away as the Moon, i.e. only a million miles away, for that to happen.

and

(a) that never happens
(b) If it did happen, you'd soon know about it as giant tidal waves caused by Mars' gravity would sweep the Earth, making the Tsunamai look like a Sunday School picnic.

So not only can you look it up on reputable websites to discover this is nonsense, you can also work it out for yourself that it must be nonsense.

Much closer to the truth is that next March Mars will look about the same size and brightness as Aldebaran, in Taurus, the13th brightest star in the sky, And they are both red. They will be a matched pair, but Mars and the Moon will never be one.

HERE IS THE STORY CNN CARRIED IN 2003

Earthlings revel in Mars close-up
Planetary approach is nearest in 60,000 years
By Richard Stenger
and Jeordan Legon
CNN
Thursday, August 28, 2003

The last time the red planet was this close to Earth 60,000 years ago, man lived in caves.

No wonder when Mars and Earth synchronized their orbits a few minutes before 6 a.m. EDT Wednesday -- bringing them closer to each other than at any time in recorded history -- thousands of people around the globe went outside to take a peek.

"Knowing that this is once in a lifetime that I can see another planet with the naked eye, yeah, it's great," said Rebecca Horton, a stargazer from Sydney, Australia.

Astronomers say Mars, five times closer now than six months ago, is about 34.6 million miles away, making it the brightest nighttime object except the moon.

"It is possible to get some fairly close encounters every few years," said amateur astronomer Paul Shallow. "It does come around, but not this close."

But with the far-away planet getting so close, some hopeful watchers felt gypped by Mother Nature.

In Oakland, California, where hundreds of space fans paid $11 to attend the Chabot Space & Science Center's "Mars Mania Costume Party," clouds rolled in along with night sky Tuesday. Mars was fogged out, and there were no refunds.

But the good news is that Mars will remain a stunning nighttime attraction for weeks. Most sky watchers can see the planet, presently in the constellation Aquarius, in the southeastern sky soon after sunset, high overhead during the midnight hours and in the southwestern sky before sunrise.

Backyard telescopes may coax features out of the reddish, orange blur, including dark, mottled streaks, which inspired scientists of past centuries to envision intricate canals and advanced Martian civilizations.

The rare configuration of 2003 has stoked renewed, albeit not as fanciful, interest in Mars, which on average cruises 50 million miles farther from the sun than Earth does.

About every 26 months, the two planets pass relatively close to one another, during periods now known as opposition.

What makes this one noteworthy is that Mars, which follows an extremely elliptical or egg-shaped path, is currently at it closest point to the sun during its orbit.

Those two conditions, along with a few obscure celestial variables, have produced an astronomical chance of a lifetime, or several lifetimes actually.

Mars won't pass closer to Earth until 2287, according to astronomers.

Besides awing the curious, the alignment has motivated numerous governments to dispatch missions to the red planet.

Taking advantage of the shorter trip distance, two U.S. and two European probes set off earlier this year, all to arrive at the end of the year.

"Mars fever has caught, not only for amateur astronomers, who are getting their best look at the planet ever and that we'll ever have in our life, but also for professionals, as you know, with the [NASA] Mars Rovers and other spacecraft that are en route," said David Eicher, editor of Astronomy magazine."

Answer 2

No.

You've gotten a spam e-mail.

If you're in the Southern Hemisphere, you can still catch a glimpse of Mars in the first half of August 2006, low down in the western sky until about an hour after sunset. It's visible to the naked eye, but you need to know just where to look. The planet disappears into the evening twilight in the second half of August from places like Santiago and Melbourne. It's not practical to see it at all in the Northern Hemisphere of the earth. Mars is certainly nothing special this month.

Many have written with questions about your e-mail. (I guess it's a tribute to the breadth of this spam.)

There is a small kernel of truth in the spam. In August 2003 (three years ago) Mars made its closest approach to earth in several thousand years. I remember it well, but it was by no means the spectacular, full-moon sized object that the spammers lead (or led) people to believe. Mars appeared as a very bright ruddy star, but not even close to the normal brilliance of Venus, let alone the full moon.

If you do receive any of the millions of dollars the spammers are promising, please remember that you must cut me in for half. And no checks please. I prefer the kind of paper with the presidents' picture on it!

Answer 3

No, nothing special about Mars this month. That bogus E-mail has been making the rounds every summer since 2003 when Mars was unusually close to Earth. But Mars is not close at all this summer and it never gets close enough to see like the Moon.

Answer 4

Mars will be close, and it will be bright, but it will still be the size of a pin-head. At it's closest point, it'll still be more than 10 times as far away as the moon, and it's not a lot larger in diameter. I don't think this was actually a hoax, as much as an email originally propagated by someone who wasn't particularly smart.

To find Mars in the sky, here's a good sky-map;
http://stardome.astronomy.com/stardome/default.aspx

Answer 5

In August, 2006, the closest Mars will come to Earth is 232,392,825.9 miles (August 1st). THREE YEARS AGO Mars came within 34,646,418 miles of Earth on August 28, 2003, the closest it's been in the last 50,000 years. Regardless of what you've been told, it was NOT as large as the full moon.

http://www.space.com/spacewatch/mars_preview_021108.html
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/mars/mars_orbit.html

Answer 6

Good question. I've heard something similar to this before. However, I don't think Mars will be as big as the moon, but I do think it might have a sighting. Wouldn't it be cool though if Mars was as big as the moon? Awww, that would be something to see!

Feel free to check out my website at: http://www.freewebs.com/shawnalee/

Answer 7

i hear this from someone else as well suppose to be on august 27th at 1230 atlantic time anyway i went to the nasa website and there is nothing there....which im sure there would have been

Answer 8

there is no special going to happen this month

Answer 9

No.