Anyone been following the progress of MARS across the night sky the past few nights or weeks?
I spent late Saturday night with a bunch of friends and my sons cheap $15 telescope and saw some really COOL stuff.
August 27th is the closest that Mars will be to the earth for the next 240 years or so. Midnight on the 27th, if clear, should see Mars about the same size as a full moon, red in all it's glory.
Perhaps a good reason to stay up late and hang out with your friends in the backyard one night this week!.......Enjoy!
[ August 25, 2003, 10:46 AM: Message edited by: Ted Nesbitt ]
Posted by goddinfla (Member # 1502) on :
I guess it would be a good time to get off Uranus and go look at Mars.
edit for typo
[ August 25, 2003, 10:24 AM: Message edited by: goddinfla ]
Posted by Glenn S. Harris (Member # 2190) on :
I saw it last night around midnight. It was as bright as venus usually is. It was WAY bigger than I'm used to seeing Mars, very spectacular. The sky was clear & Mars was right ther smacking you in the face. It was strange because I'd kind of forgotten about the whole "Mars is as close as it's been in 65,000 years thing" & I look up & think: "Why is venus orange?", then I remembered.
Posted by Ray Rheaume (Member # 3794) on :
Today is the day!
This will not happen again for 284 years.
from the Bloomberg web site... The best places to see Mars today, and in the weeks ahead as its brightness wanes, are in the Southern Hemisphere, Robin Catchpole, senior astronomer at the U.K.'s Royal Observatory Greenwich said. The planet will appear to move directly overhead after rising in the east. In the Northern Hemisphere, Mars will rise from the south-southeast, without reaching as high into the night sky as it will in the Southern Hemisphere.
Amzing when you think about it...most of us have seen the first man on the moon, the birth of the internet, and in 1984 the first alignment of the planets. What a time to be alive.
![[Eek!]](eek.gif)