Is it true that Mars will come so close to earth that it will seem as though the earth has 2 moons?

Question

My friend just sent me this emailI got this from a friend and just had to share it!

27th Aug 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 cultivate
on Aug. 27 when Mars comes within 34.65M miles of earth. Be sure to watch the sky on Aug. 27,2007 12:30 am(IST) . 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. *

Answer 1

Mars will look about the same size and brightness as ALDEBARAN, the bright red giant that is the eye of the bull and the brightest star in Taurus on 27/08/2007 and Mars will be very close to Aldebaran in the sky at the time, as it is in Taurus at the moment. (Find the Pleiades and you are getting warm ...)

So it will look like Taurus the bull has two red, bloodshot eyes! I hope that that compensates you for the disappointment you are bound to feel at being hoaxed by this e-mail which circulates every summer. Loads of people must get them because Yahoo! Answers gets loads of questions on this subject.

Once upon a time a long time ago (about 60,000 BC) there was a close approach of Mars to Earth of about 34.5 million miles..

Mars did not come that close to Earth again until 27th August 2003. That was worth remarking upon as a memorable occasion and received publicity. These occasions are called perihelic oppositions.

Mars (magnitude -2.9) was marginally brighter than Jupiter (magnitude -2.8) on that date in 2003. However Venus which is both larger than Mars and nearer than Mars is (as you might expect) always brighter than Mars and varies between magnitude -3.8 and - 4.6.

So the statement in the e-mail that Mars is about to become the brightest planet in the night sky is untrue.

The hoaxers do not know much about astronomy. They just sensationalise and distort the limited facts they have managed to pick up without properly understanding them or their implications.

As Venus has never been seen as large as the Moon and Venus is always brighter than Mars, it follows that Mars will not be seen to be as large as the Moon not on 27th August nor at any other time.

The naive belief that it "could be" that large this time just reveals the hoaxers' lack of understanding of how the Sun's gravity keeps the planets in stable orbits, which means the extent to which they vary in their positions is calculable and predictable.

Humanity has been studying and predicting the planets and their orbits for 4,000 years and writing their findings up in almanacs and suddenly someone comes along and declares "an unexpected dramatic change in a stable orbit is about to occur", wlthout explaining why that should be so. And expects to be believed!?

So the hoaxers do not understand that planetary orbits have been observed and carefully calculated and predicted for 4,000 years.

The hoaxers however seem to be suggesting that planets behave unpredictably and chaotically without any pattern or sense to that behaviour, and further, that they the hoaxers, like the Delphic Oracle of old, have unique divination powers and are passing on their knowledge, to which they alone are privy, to lucky old you.

Whereas all they are in fact passing on is misinformation based on their ignorance.

Mars, even at its nearest in 2003, was 140 times as far away as the Moon, and it is only twice its size (Equatorial radius of Mars = 3,402.5 km. Equatorial radius of the Moon = 1,738.14 km.).

So how could an object that is twice the size of the Moon but at least 140 times as far away (more like 220 times as far away in December 2007 when it will be 55 million miles away) ever look as big as the Moon? Does a tomato 220 yards away look as big as a cherry held at arm's length?

The only way Mars could ever appear as large as the Moon is if it were to get as close as half a million miles away,

If it did do that, it would be a disaster, causing huge tidal waves on Earth and tsunamai such as we have not seen the like of before. It would not be a thing to gawp at, and say "Oh wow! Awesome!" and tell all your friends to look out for it at 12.30 am !

But of course it won't do that (come within half a million miles of Earth) as Mars has a stable orbit.

The hoaxers have sent out the same e-mail every summer as regards 27 August 2004, 27 August 2005, 27 August 2006 and now 27 August 2007. Again revealing their ignorance of how the Solar System works. Mars has a year that equals 1.88 Earth years and as a result only comes close to us once every 26 months: on 27th August 2003, and then not again until 30th October 2005 and then not again until 18th December 2007.

The idea of it having a close approach on the same date every year is nonsense therefore, it is not like a wedding anniversary or a birthday or Mothers' Day, As the hoaxers seem to believe,

If anyone had have craned their necks and looked at the skies at 12.30 am on 27 August 2004 or 27th August 2006, all they would have got for their efforts was a stiff neck. As Mars was on the far side of the Sun on those two occasions and nowhere to be seen, as it was hidden behind the Sun's glare.

That is how much the hoaxers know about astronomy. That is how accurate and worthless their predictions are. Nobody should be taken in by their "knowledge" and nobody should copy and spread their e-mail to others so as "to pass on and share the exciting news" they have just received.

Snopes.com (see link) has a useful article on the hoax.

Answer 2

Fist of all, that's not the way interplanetary travel works. You launch your vehicle into a transfer orbit which is an ellipse which is tangential to the orbits of both Earth and Mars. You time the launch so that the vehicle reaches the orbit of Mars at the same time and place that Mars itself does. This is an elliptical orbit that is entirely between the orbits of Earth and Mars, and doesn't come anywhere near the Sun. Your second question seems to be more about finding a straight line through space between the Earth and Mars, which is just not practical for many reasons, most important of which is that it would require enormous energy. However you can _look_ in a straight line from Earth to Mars almost all the time, except for a relatively short period when Mars is on the far side of the Sun. How close you can follow Mars when it passes behind the Sun depends on the quality and location of your telescope. We routinely watch planets pass behind the Sun with the SOHO solar observatory satellite, when Mars is only out of sight for a few days, if at all.

Answer 3

That spam has been circulated every summer since 2003, when Mars did come unusually close. But even in 2003 it didn't get close enough to look as big as the Moon. It never gets that close. At best, Mars just looks like a bright star without a telescope. And it will not come as close this year as it did in 2003. In fact, its next close approach doesn't happen until winter. So the whole thing is just bogus.

Answer 4

Mars will never come close enough to Earth to rival the Moon in the sky. The email itself says that Mars will be 34,650,000 miles away at its closest approach. Since Mars is only a few thousand miles across, this is much too far away for Mars to appear as anything but a bright point. The effect will be similar to viewing a nickel from roughly 200 yards away.

Answer 5

In August 27th the distance between Earth and Mars will be about 1,18 AUs (176 million kms) in the constellation Taurus (Celestia docet). It will be visible at the naked eye for 2,5 hours before the sunrise, but its luminosity will be far less than Moon. The maximum luminosity of Mars is reached when it is in favourable opposition (at its peryhelion and in the opposite side to the Sun). I suppose it happened 2-3 years ago, at a distance of 0,39 AUs (55 million kms). And it was however far less luminous than Moon and Venus and visible for the whole night.

[EDIT]

Instead, it's true that in 2287 it will be very luminous (far from Moon luminosity) at a distance of 0,36 AUs.

Answer 6

Nope, nope, nope- chainmail running around now, again, that started back in '03 when Mars made a particularly-close pass to Earth. Still, it only looks like a bright star from here, even then. See

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

Mars is never so close that it even looks like the brightest star in the sky, let alone comparable in size to the moon.

We had a blue moon in June, won't be another one for about a couple of years.

Answer 7

No.

This is the same email that keeps going around for years, and it is always scheduled for next month, no matter what date it is today.
Mars cannot get closer than 34 million miles to Earth, and at that distance, it STILL looks like a bright star.
Mars may be twice the diameter of the moon, but it is only 250000 miles away, that is 136 times closer. The proximity wins hands down over a simple double the size factor.


And please, DON'T forward that spam with your friends...

Answer 8

No. The moon is 250,000 kilometers away, mars is tens of millions of miles away (as correctly stated in the article), over ten times as far. Mars is only about twice the diameter of the moon. Mars will always seem to be a fraction the size of the moon.
It may be true that mars will be closer to earth than it usually is, but it will still seem to be a tiny dot to the naked eye.

Answer 9

No. This goes around every year at this time, someone just changes the date. The closest approach was in August, 2003, but it was nothing like a full moon. I remember, because I was looking at it through my telescope!

(Read the article below for more info)

Answer 10

No. Mars will be usually bright soon because its fairly close to Earth--but it will still look likea bright star.

That story is an prank --a fake story posted on the Internet by some joker.