Post by xlaredolizx on Aug 26, 2007 21:32:52 GMT -5
[Collected via e-mail, July 2007]
Two moons on 27 August
27th Aug the Whole World is waiting for...
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 34.65M 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.
[Collected on the Internet, 2003]
The Red Planet is about to be spectacular! This month and next, Earth is catching up with Mars in an encounter that will culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history. The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287. Due to the way Jupiter's gravity tugs on Mars and perturbs its orbit, astronomers can only be certain that Mars has not come this close to Earth in the Last 5,000 years, but it may be as long as 60,000 years before it happens again.
The encounter will culminate on August 27th when Mars comes to within 34,649,589 miles of Earth and will be (next to the moon) the brightest object in the night sky. It will attain a magnitude of -2.9 and will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide. At a modest 75-power magnification Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. Mars will be easy to spot. At the beginning of August it will rise in the east at 10 p.m. and reach its azimuth at about 3 a.m.
By the end of August when the two planets are closest, Mars will rise at nightfall and reach its highest point in the sky at 12:30 a.m. That's pretty convenient to see something that no human being has seen in recorded history. So, mark your calendar at the beginning of August to see Mars grow progressively brighter and brighter throughout the month. Share this with your children and grandchildren. NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS AGAIN
Did anybody else get the email this year? Its not true.
Origins: Some things never go out of style, and this "Mars Spectacular" message may be one of them.
It's yet another example of a widely-circulated e-mail containing information that was once true but which
continues to be forwarded around year after year, long after the information it contains has become outdated.
Mars did make an extraordinarily close approach to Earth several years ago, culminating on 27 August 2003,
when the red planet came within 35 million miles
(or 56 million kilometers) of Earth, its nearest approach
to us in almost 60,000 years. At that time, Mars appeared approximately 6 times larger and 85 times brighter in the sky than it ordinarily does.
(The message quoted above was often reproduced with an unfortunate line break in the middle of the third sentence of the second paragraph,
leaving some readers with the mistaken impression that Mars would "look as large as the full moon to the naked eye" and not realizing that the
statement only applied to those viewing Mars through a telescope with 75-power magnification.)
Although Mars' proximity to Earth in August 2003 (referred to as a perihelic opposition) was a rare occurrence,
the red planet comes almost as near to us every 15 to 17 years. To the unaided observer, Mars' appearance in August 2003 wasn't significantly larger or brighter
than it is during those much more common intervals of closeness.
Mars had another close encounter with Earth in in 2005, but that occurrence took place in October (not August), and the red planet appeared about 20%
smaller than it did during similar circumstances in 2003.
As Texas astronomer Torvald Hessel observed in a 2006 interview about the perennial "Mars Spectacular" message:
Q: What's the truth?
A: Mars gets close to Earth every two years. So, last year, Mars was very close. Three years ago, it was spectacularly
close ... And right now, I'm sad to say, Mars is actually behind the Sun; we can't see it at all.
Q: How wide spread is this falsehood?
A: People get excited about it, start to send e-mail ... and every August we see this e-mail coming
back and I get a lot of e-mails about it, of course.
(Although the 2007 version of this e-mail is commonly headed by the line "Two moons on 27 August," an amusing irony is that some parts of the world won't even see one moon the following day, as a total lunar eclipse is slated to occur on that date.)
Mars' next close approach to Earth will occur in December 2007, but even then it will still be about 55 million miles away from us, not nearly as close as it was in 2003 or 2005. Not until 2018 will our view of Mars be similar to the one that was available in 2003, and it won't be until the year 2287 that Mars will come closer to Earth than it did back in 2003.
The web site of the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) provides a chart displaying data about Mars Oppositions (past, present, and future), and the web site of the Hubble Heritage Project offers some nice composite telescope images from previous Mars near oppositions.
www.snopes.com/science/mars.asp
Two moons on 27 August
27th Aug the Whole World is waiting for...
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 34.65M 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.
[Collected on the Internet, 2003]
The Red Planet is about to be spectacular! This month and next, Earth is catching up with Mars in an encounter that will culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history. The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287. Due to the way Jupiter's gravity tugs on Mars and perturbs its orbit, astronomers can only be certain that Mars has not come this close to Earth in the Last 5,000 years, but it may be as long as 60,000 years before it happens again.
The encounter will culminate on August 27th when Mars comes to within 34,649,589 miles of Earth and will be (next to the moon) the brightest object in the night sky. It will attain a magnitude of -2.9 and will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide. At a modest 75-power magnification Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. Mars will be easy to spot. At the beginning of August it will rise in the east at 10 p.m. and reach its azimuth at about 3 a.m.
By the end of August when the two planets are closest, Mars will rise at nightfall and reach its highest point in the sky at 12:30 a.m. That's pretty convenient to see something that no human being has seen in recorded history. So, mark your calendar at the beginning of August to see Mars grow progressively brighter and brighter throughout the month. Share this with your children and grandchildren. NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS AGAIN
Did anybody else get the email this year? Its not true.
Origins: Some things never go out of style, and this "Mars Spectacular" message may be one of them.
It's yet another example of a widely-circulated e-mail containing information that was once true but which
continues to be forwarded around year after year, long after the information it contains has become outdated.
Mars did make an extraordinarily close approach to Earth several years ago, culminating on 27 August 2003,
when the red planet came within 35 million miles
(or 56 million kilometers) of Earth, its nearest approach
to us in almost 60,000 years. At that time, Mars appeared approximately 6 times larger and 85 times brighter in the sky than it ordinarily does.
(The message quoted above was often reproduced with an unfortunate line break in the middle of the third sentence of the second paragraph,
leaving some readers with the mistaken impression that Mars would "look as large as the full moon to the naked eye" and not realizing that the
statement only applied to those viewing Mars through a telescope with 75-power magnification.)
Although Mars' proximity to Earth in August 2003 (referred to as a perihelic opposition) was a rare occurrence,
the red planet comes almost as near to us every 15 to 17 years. To the unaided observer, Mars' appearance in August 2003 wasn't significantly larger or brighter
than it is during those much more common intervals of closeness.
Mars had another close encounter with Earth in in 2005, but that occurrence took place in October (not August), and the red planet appeared about 20%
smaller than it did during similar circumstances in 2003.
As Texas astronomer Torvald Hessel observed in a 2006 interview about the perennial "Mars Spectacular" message:
Q: What's the truth?
A: Mars gets close to Earth every two years. So, last year, Mars was very close. Three years ago, it was spectacularly
close ... And right now, I'm sad to say, Mars is actually behind the Sun; we can't see it at all.
Q: How wide spread is this falsehood?
A: People get excited about it, start to send e-mail ... and every August we see this e-mail coming
back and I get a lot of e-mails about it, of course.
(Although the 2007 version of this e-mail is commonly headed by the line "Two moons on 27 August," an amusing irony is that some parts of the world won't even see one moon the following day, as a total lunar eclipse is slated to occur on that date.)
Mars' next close approach to Earth will occur in December 2007, but even then it will still be about 55 million miles away from us, not nearly as close as it was in 2003 or 2005. Not until 2018 will our view of Mars be similar to the one that was available in 2003, and it won't be until the year 2287 that Mars will come closer to Earth than it did back in 2003.
The web site of the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) provides a chart displaying data about Mars Oppositions (past, present, and future), and the web site of the Hubble Heritage Project offers some nice composite telescope images from previous Mars near oppositions.
www.snopes.com/science/mars.asp
