Aug. 27th the Whole World is waiting for......... ....?

Question

Aug. 27th the Whole World is waiting for......... ....

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
culminate on Aug. 27th when Mars comes within 34.65M miles of earth.

Be sure to watch the sky on Aug. 27 12:30 am (Singapore Time).

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 received this from a friend in an email....)

So I wonder is it true...so I asked...!

Answer 1

i aslo heard this last year well august is not too far anyhow so we will see

Answer 2

It is a hoax. Check out what snapes.com have to say about it on

http://www.snopes.com/science/mars.asp

There is another version naming Pluto and July 27th which is going around via the internet, but with otherwise identical content. That version is even more implausible than the Mars version. Pluto is NEVER EVER visible to the naked eye. Mars is visible to the naked eye, most of the year, but when it is on the far side of the Sun it becomes invisible in the Sun's glare.

The gap between one close approach of Mars to Earth and the next is every 26 months. There was one on 27 August 2003, another in October 2005 and there will be one this December, 2007.

However the 2003 approach was when Mars was at perihelion (closest to the Sun) and Mars reached it peak brightness of magnitude - 2.9 seen from Earth (slightly brighter than Jupiter but not as bright as Venus).

This December Mars is near aphelion (farthest from the Sun) and will be nothing like as close to Earth as it was in 2003 and will peak at a brightness of magnitude - 1.6 seen from Earth (slightly brighter than Sirius).

A hoax e-mail purporting that Mars is at its brightest in August that year goes round every summer. Not so, its orbit is 1.88 Earth years and annual close approaches to Earth would be impossible therefore. In August 2004 and August 2006 Mars was on the far side of the Sun from us and anyone who looked at the sky on 27th August 2004 or 27th August 2006 would have looked in vain as Mars was nowhere to be seen.

Mars at its closest was 34.5 million miles away in in 2003, The moon is less than a quarter of a million miles away. i.e. Mars at its brightest is about 140 times as far away as the Moon. Mars is a bit bigger than the Moon but there is no way that it can look as big as the Moon without coming as close as 1 million miles away. Which would be disaster: huge tides, tsunamai etc and not something to say "Oh wow! Let's go and look at the sky!" about.

Answer 3

This thing has been coming around every year, with just the year changed. I think it started in 2004 or 2003 when Mars did make a close approach. You can read the whole history of it on snopes.com. They also have a link to a page with NASA's comments.

Answer 4

Sorry, but this is a hoax, which originated in 2003 when Mars actually was at its closest (though nowhere near as big or bright as the email implied). Mars will be close to the Earth in December 2007, but much farther away than it was in 2003. Please reply to your friend, and ask them to stop spreading false messages!

Answer 5

Someone will be alive until 2287 if mankind researched out a method of freezing hibernation which is normally sci-fi.

Answer 6

On August 27th, I'm going to my favorite band's concert....

Answer 7

i have seen that email last year(2006)

same words...
same paragraph
it's all the same!!! hahaha LOL

Answer 8

This is true.

Answer 9

THAT DAY IS ALSO MY Birthday !!