Did you know there will be two moons out this August? read details...?

Question

*Two moons on 27th August 2007*

*27th August; the day the Whole World is waiting for.

The 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 34.65 Million 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.

Just to let you know, i received this info. from an email, wether it's true or not i do not know, but i will watch on that night....because you never know.

Answer 1

This is a hoax. And very old news, based on a garbled and distorted version of events on August 27th 2003 when there was a close approach of Mars to Earth, but as you can see, it now circulates with no year-date attached, so that people infer it must mean 2007.

GROUNDS TO BE SUSPICIOUS

One clue as to the illiteracy of the senders is their amusing Malapropism in using the word "cultivate" when what they really mean is "culminate"!

Another clue that the hoaxsters don't know what they are talking about when it comes to the Moon is that there is no mention of the Lunar Eclipse due on August 28th 2007.

Given the interest people have shown in solar and lunar eclipses for four millennia, this is a staggering omission for a group of people posing as publicists for exciting news about astronomical events coming up shortly.

If they don't even know there is a lunar eclipse in the offing, how reliable do you think the rest of their information is going to be?

IS THERE ANY TRUTH AT ALL IN WHAT THE E-MAIL SAYS?

These hoax e-mails circulate every summer. Loads of people must get them because Yahoo! Answers gets loads of questions on this subject.

Mars WILL look about the same size and brightness as another celestial body on 27th August, That much is true.

But that body is NOT the Moon, but ALDEBARAN, the bright red giant that is the eye of the bull and the brightest star in Taurus. Bit of a big mistake to make, that, wouldn't you say?

Mars will also be very close to Aldebaran in the sky too on 27th August 2007. Mars will be about +0.7 magnitude and Aldebaran is +0.85 magnitude. (A Full Moon is -12.7 magnitude, which means, with a 13.4 difference in magnitude from Mars, the Moon is 200,000 brighter than Mars!)

SIDE BY SIDE?

You can see where the Moon is yourself, and it is nowhere near Mars and Aldebaran. So Mars will not be appearing "side by side"
with the Moon. Nor will it be as large or as bright as the Moon as the e-mail claims.

ONCE UPON A TIME

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 hoax 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 with no credentials or track record in the world of astronomy 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 that professional astronomers would already know about this if what they say was true!

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) (more like 420 times as far away on 27th August 2007 when it will be 105 million miles away) ever look as big as the Moon? Does a tomato a quarter of a mile away look as big as a cherry held at arm's length? I think not!

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 stay up and 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 hoaxsters 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 hoaxsters 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 hoaxsters 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 the exciting news" they have just received.

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

Answer 2

Though you might like to know, NE Arizona at 34N / 111W, 12:30am, Mars >is just riseing over the tree tops.
> This refers to an event that occurred in 2003. Every year since then

> around
> this time, this "news" finds it's way into people's email. The part
about
> it looking like the Earth having two moons is inaccurate; Mars
appeared as
> a
> very bright "star" but still could not be resolved as anything more
that a
> point of light without the use of a telescope.
>
> Rusty Tweed
>
>
> Russell Tweed
> Development Manager
> Lowell Observatory
> 928-774-3358 / 928-233-3267
>
> *******************************
> Support Astronomy Education and Research
> Join the Friends of Lowello is just riseing above the tree tops.

Answer 3

This is a canard that has been running around for four years; there is not the slighest truth in it, as can easily be seen by data in the story itself. If the moon comes within 35 million miles of earth (which it can), it will still be over 100 times as far away as the moon, and Mars is only slightly larger than the moon. So the most that you will see of Mars is a moderately bright point of light.

Answer 4

I can see how you could be a top contributor. You probably got that by answering questions like “My boyfriend keeps looking at other girls. What should I do?”

You certainly didn’t get it for answering any science questions.

Read the answers above. Mars will NEVER EVER appear as large as the moon. If you just thought about it for one second you would realise that.

But go ahead. Go out like a fool, like all the idiots who had Mars parties last year, and never saw anything other than a bunch of stars like every other night.

Answer 5

PLEASE! Always use the "Search For Questions" form (it's right there at the top of this page) to see if someone has already asked your question. That's what it's for!

If you had just typed "Mars moon August" into the search box, you would have found that there were 112 people who have already asked virtually the same question. All of them, like you, were fooled by this hoax which has been recirculating on the Internet every summer since 2003. I suppose we'll probably see it again in 2008 (sigh).

Answer 6

How in God's name did you get to be a top contributor?
Mars will NEVER optically look as large as the moon in the sky. It never looks as big and bright as Jupiter and Venus.
Craploads...... This fallacy has been circulating the internet for a couple of months now. It's completely bogus.
Start watching the sky more often, so you have some clue as to what actually goes on and how it works.

Answer 7

Definitely not. This is a hoax that's been going for YEARS - since 2003, I think! The irony is, on the 28th, some people won't even see ONE moon - there's a total lunar eclipse that night! (First total one visible from eastern Australia in quite a few years - I can't wait!)

Answer 8

are fricken serious, you believe this?

if mars is 35 million miles away (like what happened in 2003) itll still look like a red star. theres no way it could appear as big as the moon unless it was a third of the suns size.
if mars was as close as the moon, mars and earth will collide, and we will all be vaporized

Answer 9

not too false. mars is now pretty damn close to us.
Nasa used the oppertunity starting on 8/3/2007 to send more probes to mars. They are on the way right now. goal, to drill through ICE in the poles to look for signs of LIFE
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/newsroom/pressreleases/20070804a.html

2003 was the closest though.

MARS CAN NEVER COME CLOSE ENOUGH TO EARTH TO LOOK LIKE A MOON.

gravity of the two planets would pull them into each other and we would all die in less than a year.

I received and email that said I needed to reset my password for my bank.
You never know..........
but I wasn't going to fall for it. I researched it and found that people where "PHISHING" for people's bank info so they could Wipe them out financially.
You never know..........

Answer 10

I guess I don't get around much because I didn't see it posted before. From the answers I can't see if it's true or not, but I will have to at least give it a peek on that day!

Answer 11

FALSE Report. That occurred in 2002, Not 2007