mars as big as the moon on August 27th? Is this True!?

Question

Planet Mars will be the brightest in the night sky starting August.
It will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. This will cultivate
on Aug. 27 when Mars comes within 34.65M miles of earth. Be sure to watch
the sky on Aug. 27 12:30 am. It will look like the earth has 2 moons. The
next time Mars may come this close is in 2287.
Share this with your friends as NO ONE ALIVE TODAY will ever see it again..



I got this bulletin from a friend...Is this true??

Answer 1

Yes, and the Moon is not going to like being upstaged, and there is going to be a war between the Man in the Moon, and the Spiders from Mars, and then Earth will have to send up a space ship with extra cheese because all the cheese on the Moon will have melted, and the Blue Jeans in Venus will think it's a big pizza and try to eat it, but we will stop them in the end by putting out the sun by spraying it with a big interplanetary hose and it will be so dark that the space critters won't be able to see where the Moon is. And then we will all live happily ever after.

Answer 2

As answered above, the close approach happened in 2003 but gets ressurrected every August. Mars has a close approach like this about every 30 but the one in 2003 was a few percent closer than usual, making it notable but visibly no different.

The "big as the moon" piece of misinformation came from a badly worded website which tried to say that, at the close approach, Mars in telescope will look as big as the Moon does to the the naked eye. This is true. In fact, during the 2003 approach, the Moon was a mere 80 times larger than Mars.

Answer 3

What the reports said in 2003 was:

Mars ***IN A TELESCOPE**** looks LIKE the moon, as the MOON ****APPEARS TO THE NAKED EYE. ****

That analogy is true. It has been grievously mis-used in the press and in the Internet. The reason the ANALOGY is correct is that when you look at the moon naked eye you can see bright spots and dark spots but you can't see craters and other such details.

If you look at Mars in a good earth telecoope, you can see the polar caps, some dark markings, some occasional smudges that are dust storms, some blue fringing and haze which are high thin clouds. Mars has a lot of craters but you just can't see them in typical earth telescopes. That's why we say that, in a telescope, Mars looks like the moon does, to the human eye, with no telescope.

To the naked eye at opposition (when it is very close) Mars looks like a bright star.

hope that helps

GN

Answer 4

Oh boy, this crazy story is going everywhere.

Mars at its closest approach in 2003 was 55 million km from Earth, and while it is twice the size of our moon there is no way it could look as large as the full moon in our sky.
For it to look that large it would have to be (at a guess) about 600,000 km from Earth.

Why don't people just think a tiny bit and use just a little logic before they go believing such rubbish?

Answer 5

False.

It is the third time around this hoax comes around (only the year being changed).

To have Mars "as large as the Full Moon", it would have to leave its orbit and come VERY close to us.

In August, Mars is still in quadrature (nowhere near its closest point to Earth in its orbit). Well over 100 million miles from us. Mars' diameter is less than 7000 km (4300 mi).

4300/100 million = 0.0000043 radian = 0.15 arc-min.
By comparison, the Full moon is more than 30 arc-minutes in diameter.

The Full Moon will be more than 200 times bigger than Mars.

Seen from Earth, Mars cannot be as large as the Full Moon. Ever. Never.

Even at it closest distance ever (34.65 million miles, back quite a few years ago),
4300/34.65 Million = 0.000124 radian
0.427 arc-min (the Full Moon was still 72 times bigger).

Answer 6

Not true.

Mars was unusually close in August 2003, and that is when this story started. It is a mixture of several different reports that got distorted and the widely and incorrectly reported. It has been resurrected every August ever since.

While Mars did come unusually close in 2003, it never looked like anything but a bright star in the sky. And it won't even do that this year. It isn't going to be especially close this year.

Answer 7

"because of the fact the moon is the closest physique in area to our planet earth, there is in no way going to be yet another merchandise as vast because of the fact the moon" -TP actual, the solar each so often looks extra effective interior the sky than the moon. it quite is why we've annular photograph voltaic eclipses each so often quite of finished photograph voltaic eclipses, because of the fact the moon isn't quite sufficiently vast to dam out the quickly. this is because of the fact the gap between the moon and earth adjustments, as does the gap between the earth and solar. "An annular eclipse happens whilst the solar and Moon are precisely in line, however the plain length of the Moon is smaller than that of the solar. hence the solar looks as a very vivid ring, or annulus, surrounding the define of the Moon."

Answer 8

No, I'm sorry to say it is not true. Mars already had a very close approach to Earth a while back ago (one of its closest ever) and even at its closest, it will not look as big as the moon.

But if it did, it would be soo cool.

Answer 9

No, of course not. Mars never gets that close to the Earth.

Answer 10

Come on. Mars is, at no point in its orbit, close enough to appear that big. Mars was supposed to come closest in its orbit a while back, I believe, (somewhere around 3 years ago if I remember right) and it was close enough that with a decent telescope you could see the ice caps.