I see many questions about the two moons and the red moon tonight. The way I understand it is that the planet Mars will be as close to the earth's orbit as it has been in over 2000 years, and because of this, and Mar's atmosphere, the sun's reflection will actually be bouncing from the sun to MARS, then off of Mars' dense atmosphere to earth. This light "detour" off of Mars will then cause the moon to turn a "blood red" color. But I'm cloudy as crap here so I won't be able to see anything anyway. I even broke out the telescope, apparently for nothing. And as far as the two moons...well it's actually the moon and mars in the sky, but Mars won't be any brighter than Venus is during the summer soltice. It will just look like the brightest STAR in the sky. Courtesy of "Star Hustler" circa 1990, PBS
2007-08-27 17:13:59 · 6 answers · asked by cakeypoo_24 3 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
Wow, that's by far the most convoluted attempt I've heard of to explain reasons for things that won't even happen. Using "details" that aren't close to accurate. I don't even know where to begin. But I'll try.
1: The unusually close approach of Mars happened 4 years ago.
2: The closest it will get this year is still farther than in 2003
4: Even that won't happen until December - Christmas Eve, in fact
5: The close approach in 2003 was the closest in about 60,000 years, not 2000
6: Even then, it wasn't the brightest "star" in the sky - not even the brightest planet
7: Mars' atmosphere is not even remotely "dense"
8: The summer solstice has no relation to Venus' apparent brightness
8b: although, coincidentally this year Venus' greatest brightness was seen sort of NEAR the summer solstice (June 21) - but still a full three weeks later (July 12)
One thing it gets right is the upcoming red appearance of the moon. But it doesn't even mention the significant event that will cause this - the lunar eclipse during the night of the 27th-28th. The red color will be caused by the sun's light passing through the Earth's atmosphere, essentially projecting a combined sunrise/sunset glow onto the shadowed lunar surface.
2007-08-27 17:53:33 · answer #1 · answered by skeptik 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
The two moons EMAIL is a HOAX! It makes its rounds every year!
There's only one moon in the sky. A planet will never look much brighter or bigger than a star because of the vast distances away from us. Our moon is VERY close to us, thus, it is big in size.
The story about two moons was taken from an article about Mars being closer to Earth than usual back in 2003. (right now, the Earth is catching up to Mars and will be closest to it this year in December).
In the article, it told watchers that if they used a 75X magnification to look at Mars with a telescope, it would look "as big as the moon."
Of course, if you leave out the telescope part and send emails to people changing the info to 2007, you get people looking for two moons like they were actually on Pluto or some planet that actually has two REAL moons.
Another place to find two moons on many weekends is to travel to any college town and check out the frat parties at about 2 AM...
2007-08-27 17:19:31 · answer #2 · answered by TOMMYBOY 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
the place are you getting your concepts from? upload some information and practice us your evidence of Mars being the closest in 2000 years. The sunlight's mirrored photograph would be bouncing off Mars then to Earth turning the Moon purple? the place did you come again up with that? the sole factor it extremely is cloudy indexed here are your innovations. you won't be able to purely take heresay out of your nutty neighbor or from a psychic internet site and submit them on a technology communicate board as some style of data. as nicely Mars looking like a famous man or woman, the the remainder of your 'fact' is ridiculous hogwash. supply us the technology web content or books the place you won your information. this is advisable to ease up on your 'statements' for a collectively as.
2016-10-17 04:29:21 · answer #3 · answered by gustavo 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
There's no gentle way to say this, but you've been had BAD. The eclipse is nothing to do with Mars. And the Mars opposition this year doesn't happen until December.
2007-08-27 17:19:26 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
Did Captain Cracker not read the previous two answers?
What a mass of losers there are in the world. You can tell them anything and they believe it.
No wonder the world is in such a mess, we are breeding idiots all over the place.
2007-08-27 17:29:34 · answer #5 · answered by nick s 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
I didn't know it's gonna look like that, that makes me wanna see it now. I gotta see this!
2007-08-27 17:20:47 · answer #6 · answered by - 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋