Certain wonderful events arrive just once a year , like birthday , Thanksgiving , anniversaries , and back - to - school day gross revenue for bureau supplies . deplorably , a new annual custom has issue : claiming that Mars will appear to be the same size of it as the full moon at the remainder of August .
Chances are , you ’ve seen something like this floating around :
( Over 626,000 ploughshare ? ! I ’m start to think people are doing this just to bang with me . Mission accomplished . Now stop it . )
So where did this folderal originate ? The closelipped approach for Mars and Earth in 2003 was the secretive it been in nearly 60,000 yr and was the best time to see the flushed planet through a strong telescope . Phil Plaitexplained last year :
“ On that date , through a scope that magnifies an image 75x , Marswouldlook as big as the Moon does to the raw centre . … But this being the cyberspace , that got all mished and comminute up , and somehow became this thought that if you went outside Mars would attend huge in the sky , loom over the world like something out of an H. G. Wells novel . "
While it is reasonable that someone could make a punch-drunk error , it is only undecipherable how it could have persisted this long . At the ending of the day , it does n’t count why . The only important thing to remember is that Mars will never appear as enceinte as the full lunation in the dark sky . Not in 2014 ; not in 2287 . Not ever .
The respective orbit of Mars and Earth make their closest approach with one another once every 26 months . The most late event was this past April , when it just happened tocoincide with a full lunar eclipse . This year , that approach left a distance of 92 million kilometers ( 57.2 million mile ) between the planets , and while Marscouldbe seen with the naked eye , it was still just a small slur of red light .
August 27 also happens to settle two days after the new moon , so the moon will be in its rise crescent phase ; certainly not full . These benighted sky experimental condition will make it a peachy time to snaffle a mantle and a scope to check out the star , but do n’t be fooled into thinking that Mars will be an over-the-top feature . Astronomy is enough cool all on its own ; these gimmicks just undermine that . ( There ’s also a lot to be said for such rampant serial sharing without any fact checking . Slate’sScott Huler hits the nail on the headwith that topic . )
Just for kicks , how closewouldMars need to be to look as with child as the full moon in the dark sky ? About 780,000 kilometers ( 485,000 miles ) , which is approximately 118 times closer than it will ever be . Heck , the Moon ’s average space is about 363,100 kilometers ( 225,600 miles ) , so we ’d all be in pretty big difficulty if Mars got that closemouthed .
[ Hat summit : EarthSky.org , Phil Plait ]
