On Sunday, Aug 27.. will Mars be closer to the earth than ever before?

Question

I heard a something about it, but didn't get all the info.

Answer 1

Mars was closer to earth than it had been for 60,000 years on August 27th 2003. (See the CNN News story of 28th August 2003 below,)

But reports of that event with no year date attached are circulating and creating the false impression that it is this year that is being referred to.

FIGirl518 (above) has cut and pasted one such report above, circulating it as though it were the truth, That is how disinformation spreads and confuses and takes people in.

She is going to feel an awful fool on Sunday as are a lot of other people who have swallowed this urban legend hook, line and sinker. They will look up at the skies in eager anticipation and there will be nothing there such as has been promised as being imminent. Not even a Mars Bar,

So you are right to be sceptical. Let me try and disentangle the truth from the garbled reportage which is being turned into rumours before your very eyes and being spread far and wide.

You won't even be able to see Mars this Sunday. Not unless you have X-ray vision like Superman and can see through the sun, as Mars is currently on the far side of the Sun at the moment and at least 220,000,000 (220 million) miles away, Over 6 times as far away as it was at its close point in 2003,

So the story couldn't be much further from the truth and Mars could not be much further from the earth.

It won't be visible again till December 2006 and the next close approach is not until 24th December 2007,

The forwarded e-mail that is circulating is a garbled version of what WAS true on August 27th 2003. When a close approach of 34,500,000 miles DID take place and that WAS the closest it had come for 60,000 years.

The reason the 2003 approach was so rare was that Mars was at perihelion (the closest it gets to the sun) within 3 days of being the closest it came to the Earth. This is called a perihelic opposition (see the appendix where I have listed the perihelic oppositions up to 2287,

Close approaches (of which perhaps only one in seven is a perihelic opposition) 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 fairy story that Mars will look as big as our Moon. Unlikely and untrue,

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

WHAT NASA HAS TO SAY ABOUT MARS THIS YEAR

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? 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

Go to Google and search on "Mars Close Approach"

It now comes up with a bunch of refutations of this thing.

Just yesterday, the same search came up with the first entry a story about the August 27 2003 close approach of Mars. The problem with that entry was that it was a 3 year hangover and people finding it were not aware that it was three years old.

So, the thing was not a hoax. It was a mistake. The BBC put the article out in 2003 and it hung about until yesterday when I emailed the BBC and told them they were responsible for perpetuating this falsehood and that in future they should either archive their articles sooner or at least make the date plain in the title.

Mars will NOT make a record close approach this year.

You missed the best one in 2003. Sorry.

Answer 3

Yes. 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 os on 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 Aug. 27 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 10 p. 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 12:30 a. m. That's pretty convenient to see something that no human being has seen in recorded history.

No one alive today will ever see this again.

CORRECTION: I just looked on snopes.com and found out that this is another one of those SCAM e-mails. Don't know why people go to all that trouble making these things up. Maybe they wanted to see how many people would be looking up in the sky on the night of the 27th.

Answer 4

Mars is set till next April .

It's a hoax..
I heard about the Mars hoax and the answer is no . I'll tell you the real scoop on it . In 2003 it was in fact true ! Mars was the closest it's ever been on August 27 2003 .
The next year a New York Observatory reprinted the story again on the August 27th date for a joke . It was hown in the states on the local news and they said " The latest Mars craze is going on again this year , It was said to be started again by a new york observatory as a joke and well it's been listed as spam. And it currently is circulating the internet as a forward . We spoke to our local astronomers to get the story and they showed us where Mars is . Under the horizon till next year. t's completely not true this year , It did actually happen last in 2003 as we all know but this time it's a joke. an April fools joke . No madness intended . "
So it's been floating around for 2 years . Actually there is alot of it going around, crazy emails floating areound of it , observatory phones ringing off the hook .
It has turned into one big hoax . For further reading put in Mars Hoax into google & google news .
Next year the Mars Hoax will float again I bet !

Answer 5

It is a false report. Mars is on the far side of the Sun and not even visible this month.

Answer 6

That happened in 2003

Answer 7

Why do people keep saying this!

If anything it's further away!

Things are different for OUTER PLANETS than for INNER PLANETS

Mercury and Venus are INNER PLANETS, thus CONJUCTION is closesly.

For Outer plants Conjuction is the furtherest. MArs is in CONJUCTION

Oppositioin, as pointed out, was last year or 2005.

Answer 8

Don't know! But I heard that they're considering Pluto not as a planet anymore, and they found three new ones!

Answer 9

August 27th 2003....this is history...and the view was good...wanna see a photo?

Answer 10

yes yes yes, gravitational forces says yessss
every second earth is attracting mars and mars is attracting earth .
Newton says : yess yes ss

Answer 11

This latest story is an urban legend.