Will Mars come close to earth later this month and be about the size of the moon?

Question

Heard that this is happening at present because of the gravity pull of jupiter. It will be very clear on the 27th of August when it will be the same size as the moon, I've been told that this could not happen. But also told that this will not occur again for another 60,00 years. Suppose my legs being pulled.

Answer 1

Doug is wrong. Earth's Aphelion was July 4th. And Mars will not be 35,000,000 miles away THIS August 27th. It was true on August 27th, 2003. Mars is on the far side of the Sun right now at a distance of some 220,000,000 miles. And it is not going to manage to beetle back half a Martian Orbit (some 443,000,000 miles, which would normally take 50 weeks) in the next nine days!

As you can see, disinformation abounds and is passed on uncritically, as people believe everything they are told.

Mars was the closest it has been for 60,000 years on 27th August 2003, There won't be another such Very Close Encounter till 2287 but there is a Fairly Close Encounter every 26 months.

What you have picked up on is a hoax doing the rounds as it does every August since 2003.

Mars is on the far side of the sun right now and won't even be visible again till December. So the story couldn't be further from the truth and Mars could not be further from the earth.

An e-mail is going around suggesting that the close approach ("perihelic opposition") of Mars and Earth of 27 August 2003 (see the CNN News story below) will occur THIS 27th August, 2006. It won't!

Such perihelic oppositions occur once every 26 months, The Martian Year is 1.88 Earth Years so when we have done 2 and a bit orbits Mars has done 1 and a bit orbits and we are close together again.

Therefore, after an August 2003 Close Encounter, the next one was in October 2005 and the next Close Encounter after that is not until December 2007,

There is no close approach this year.

Central to the hoax going around is the Baron Von Munchausen attention-grabbing story that Mars will look as big as our Moon. Unlikely-sounding and, as you rightly suspected, untrue,

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

I went to NASA's Kids Website which told me:

"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-but-one time it was close to us on 27th 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 fantastical 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 kms and the Moon of 3474 kms).

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 diameter is twice the size of the Moon, Mars would have to be only twice as far away as the Moon, i.e. less than half 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, the 13th 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

Mars is not approaching this August

There is an email circulating in cyberspace saying that the red planet Mars will be exceptionally close on 27 August (2006). According to one version “It will look like the Earth has two moons”!!!

Once again this is a good lesson in not believing everything on the Internet. The email is a hoax describing in a somewhat exaggerated fashion the events of 2003. On 27 August 2003 Mars was only 55.8 million kilometres away which is almost the closest possible distance it can be from Earth. To the unaided eye it looked like a shining red beacon while through a telescope a small red disc could be seen with some dark features visible.

In late August this year (2006) Mars is faint and just visible after sunset low in the western sky.

Answer 3

Ahh, i take it you got the email doing the rounds, I was wondering about this as well so i emailed my friend who works at the observitory down the road and this is what she told me.

'Thanks for your message - this is a Hoax and has been circulating the worldwide web for a few months now.
Actually most of the information is correct but only correct for 2003 when Mars WAS at its closest approach to Earth in 60,000 years - (This is called Opposition) In 2003 Mars was 55.8 million kms from us and at its closest approach in 60,000 years.

Mars will never get as large as a full moon, this is impossible and would worry quite a few astronomers if it did.
A power point presentation was circulated as well and this too is a hoax. Some of the PP presentations do say that it is a hoax but most of them do not.

At the present time, Mars in its orbit, is on the other side of the Sun well away from Earth in its orbit and at the end of October Mars will be some 400 million Kms away from Earth (this is called Conjunction). I
There are plenty of good and reliable info sites on the net about this hoax. A quick "google.co.nz" search will find most of them. '

Answer 4

If Mars did come close enough to rival the Moon, its gravity would alter Earth's orbit and raise terrible tides.

Is that what you want ?? huh ?

It was a hoax - sorry. I read in 2003 mars was the closest then, and it was seen as a bright red star.

Answer 5

Mr. Astronomically Gullible, if Mars approached to such a distance there would be cosmic disaster due to gravitation disruption of orbits. You might as well believe that the sun will become the new center of the universe or that Venus is flat.

Answer 6

The Earth will be at aphelion and Mars will be at perihelion on 27 August. But they'll *still* be nearly 35 million miles apart so Mars is *not* gonna look as big as the moon.

Yes, this happens about every 70,000 to 100,000 years.
Go look at
http://webpages.charter.net/darksky25/Astronomy/Articles/April2003.html

You really shouldn't have slept through all those science classes.


Doug

Answer 7

Funny, this is the second time that I saw someone ask this here, who is going around telling people this? Mars will never appear to be as big as the moon given its distance from Earth.

Answer 8

no that is not true, there is an email going around saying that you will be able to see mars but that has already happened. All you could see was a big red star.

Answer 9

in oder for that to happen mars would have to break free of its orbit and take up a new one within a few hundred thousand miles of the earth.

Its highly doutbful that it will happen anytime soon.

It is possible that it will be in a nice position for viewing this summer, although i thought we just went through that a couple summers ago... meh.

Check out nasa's web site, they tend to post big things like that.

Answer 10

That big flap about Mars being brighter than the moon, or looking as large as the moon, or being closer to Earth in 2006 than it's ever been before is a big, fat LIE. Somebody's going around spreading this falsehood, probably through ignorance.

The close approach to Mars to Earth happened on 27 August 2003. Three years ago! If you missed it then, you'll have to wait for the next of Mars' closest passes.

Mars' orbit and Earth's orbit approach each other by a minimum distance of 0.372669 astronomical units. One astronomical unit is equal by definition to exactly 149,597,870,691 meters, which is about equal to 92,955,807 miles. So the orbits of Mars and Earth have a minimum separation of about 34,642,000 miles. In order for this minimum separation to be achieved, both Earth and Mars must be in exactly the right spot in their respective orbits, which is at 330.145 degrees heliocentric longitude for Earth and 330.337 degrees heliocentric longitude for Mars.

The technical way to refer to these passes of Earth by Mars is "Earth and Mars in conjunction with respect to the sun." Another way to say it is "Mars and the sun are in opposition with respect to Earth." It means the same thing, namely, Earth reaching the point in its orbital lap where it passes the slower Mars.

Mars and Earth have a conjunction about every 780 days (on the average). But typically the distance of closest approach is something like 54.8 million miles, which is what it will be on the NEXT conjunction on 18 December 2007. There will be no conjunction in 2006.

But the really close conjunctions occur at intervals of 15 or 17 years - usually. The special thing about the pass in 2003 was the fact that it was marginally closer than any other pass in recorded history. Not spectacularly closer. Only marginally so. It set a record that won't be broken until the year 2208 (and then not by much).

Here are the closest passes between Mars and Earth between 2003 and 2287. (The list includes all minimum approach distances less than about 0.4 AU.)

27 August 2003, 0.3729 AU
30 July 2018, 0.3846 AU
9 September 2035, 0.3805 AU
13 August 2050, 0.3742 AU
17 July 2065, 0.3991 AU
23 September 2067, 0.3970 AU
28 August 2082, 0.3736 AU
31 July 2097, 0.3818 AU
12 September 2114, 0.3831 AU
15 August 2129, 0.3733 AU
19 July 2144, 0.3950 AU
25 September 2146, 0.4012 AU
29 August 2161, 0.3748 AU
2 August 2176, 0.3793 AU
13 September 2193, 0.3861 AU
18 August 2208, 0.3727 AU
22 July 2223, 0.3913 AU
1 September 2240, 0.3763 AU
6 August 2255, 0.3772 AU
15 September 2272, 0.3895 AU
20 August 2287, 0.3726 AU

Mars will be visible at other times, of course. But those are the days when it will be the brightest. But even when Mars is at one of these closest conjunctions, it is still much dimmer than the moon is.

Mars has an apparent magnitude at such times of -2.8. The moon's apparent magnitude, when full, is -12.6. The way the scale is set up, the more largely negative the number is, the brighter it is. Not only that, the scale is logarithmic, with a base equal to the fifth root of 100, or about 2.51186. So the full moon is 8318 times brighter than Mars ever gets.

Nor does Mars' size in our sky ever get anywhere close to the Moon's size. Mars' physical diameter is 6794 kilometers, so at it's nearest possible approach to Earth, it's angular diameter would be 25.14 arcseconds. The moon's angular diameter is about half a degree (it varies slightly), which is 1800 arcseconds. So Mars never gets bigger than about one seventy-first (1/71) of the moon's size.

Mars' orbital elements.
a = 1.523688 AU
e = 0.093405
i = 1.8497 degrees
L = 49.5574 degrees
w = 286.5016 degrees
T = JD 2447385.9

Earth's orbital elements.
a = 1.00000011 AU
e = 0.016761
i = defined zero
L = defined zero
w = 102.846 degrees
T = JD 2446799.26

There's a mathematical procedure to solve for the heliocentric positions of a planet for any time you choose, once you know the planet's orbital elements. You'll find that procedure given in great detail here:

http://www.jabpage.org/posts/trans2.html

After you've solved for the positions of Earth and Mars, each with respect to the sun, you can apply the distance formula (sometimes called the three-dimensional Pythagorean Theorem) to get the distance between Earth and Mars. If you program all that into a computer, you can just flip forward or backward in time until you locate the minimum distances and the associated calendar date.

The "T" number in the orbital element tables is the "time of perihelion passage," the moment when the planet is nearest to the sun. It is customarily given in Julian Date format, which is a rolling count of days since that day in 4004 BC, on which, Bishop Ussher's scholarly Bible research informed him, God created the world.

There are formulas that can convert Julian Date to Calendar Date, or vice versa. But it's probably easier to use somebody else's program, which you can find at

http://wwwmacho.mcmaster.ca/JAVA/JD.html
http://wwwmacho.mcmaster.ca/JAVA/CD.html

Don't believe everything you hear about celestial events. There's always some ignorant yahoo out to impress others with some sort of "special knowledge" that he supposedly has.

Answer 11

yes, it's true it will happen...it's not going to be the same size as the moon though...it will just be the biggest it's been in thousands of years...