Does anybody know at all how true this is?Planet Mars will come 34.65 miles of earth on August 27th @ 12:30am?

Question

Basically I received an e-mail from some co- workers. I don't know if it's true or not but it sounds interesting. But I don't want to be outside just standing arounding with my head to the sky and nothing happens. They stated that Mars will be the brightest star starting in August.It will end on Aug. 27th when Mars will actually be visible about 34.65 miles away from Earth.It will appear we have two moons. The next time this may appear is year 2287. Fact or Fiction?

Answer 1

Yes, Mars will look about the same size and brightness as another celestial object on August 27th. But it isn't the Moon.

It is ALDEBARAN, the bright red giant that is the eye of the bull and the brightest star in Taurus, 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. Five or six in the same day, sometimes.

Once upon a time a long time ago (about 60,000 BC) there was a close approach of Mars to Earth of about 34.65 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 star 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 and they 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 and then not again after that till February 2010. (The first contributor's "nearly every year" is, as you can see, not a true statement,)

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

First off, you really need to think about the rationality of any celestial object (especially a planet) being 34 miles from Earth...

The Moon is about 230,000 miles from earth. The Earth's atmosphere extends about 100 miles from the surface of the Earth... So, Mars would be in Earth's atmosphere at 34 miles...

Anyway, the whole thing is based on the fact that Mars makes its closest approach to Earth EVERY year (time of year depends on the relationship of Earth's orbit to Mars' orbit)... About 34-40 million miles depending...

You can see Mars in the night sky throughout most of the fall... it appears as a bright reddish "star" due to the Sun's light reflecting off of its reddish soil.

Always question things that seem to make no sense... which is I guess what you are doing on here... So, good for you. You have a leg up on most that just blindly believe ridiculous theories like this and the Moon hoax...

Answer 3

Internet Hoax!!! These guys may have been fooled by it, or they may be trying to take you for a ride.

If Mars got to within 35 miles of the Earth, there would be a cataclysm of biblical proportions. And that's especially true since it would have to come all the way from the other side of the sun in the next 17 days -- the speeds at which it would be travelling sould ensure the total annihilation of both planets.

Go check out snopes.com -- this is a rework of the same hoax pulled about 4 years ago, and revisited every year about this time.

Answer 4

**sigh**

This is a hoax. Mars' closest approach in 60,000 years happened a couple of years ago, and even then, it was 40 *million* miles away. About every 2 years, we get close enough to Mars to see it as one of, if not the brightest stars on the sky, but it will never appear to Earth as a 'second moon.'

Answer 5

That is not going to happen. This myth started in 2003 when Mars did come unusually close to Earth, and has been repeated every summer ever since. But even in 2003 it never got close enough to look like anything other than a bright star. This year Mars will not pass close to Earth until winter, and even then it won't be as close as it was in 2003.

Answer 6

It's everything false, in that day Mars will be at a distance of more than 2 AUs (more than 180 million miles away) from Earth. And the minimum distance reached in 2003 was 43 million miles.

Answer 7

The figure is 34 MILLION miles. At that disatnce, Mars looks like a bright star, nothing more.
And closest approach like that (i.e. between 34 and 40 million mmiles) occur nearly every year, althouh the very closest approache (i.e. 34 million instead of 35) are about once in a century.
34 miles is inside the earth's atmosphere, do you really think a planet can get that close?

This email is a load of garbage that has been going around for several years already. It was fake, it is fake, and will remain fake.

Answer 8

It's crap. Sorry about that, but if Mars was 34 miles away, earth would be DEAD. You wouldn't get to see it.
However, in 2003, something similar happened-Mars was the second largest thing in the night sky, but it still wasn't anywhere near as large as the moon.

Answer 9

It might be bright in August, I don't know about that. But seeing as how the moon is over 200,000 miles away, I seriously *seriously* would refute that Mars will come within 35 miles. Technically, Mars would have to enter the Earth's atmosphere to come this close.

Answer 10

Fiction. A) Its not a star B) It has a basic cercular obit, and is at all times is too far away to see, several thousand miles. the only reason we see jupiter is because its huge but mars is the 3rd smallest planet in the solor system, and never will we see its moons with the naked eye. They are tiny.