Friday, August 3, 2007

Mars myth debunked by UTA planetarium director

By Pegasus News wire

Earth says to Mars: "Holy strawberries Mars! Let's get outta this jam!!!!"

ARLINGTON—Despite what widely circulating e-mails claim, University of Texas at Arlington Planetarium Director Marc Rouleau says that the planet Mars will not be up to anything noteworthy on Aug. 27. The e-mails claim that Mars will be “closer to Earth than anytime in our lifetime,” or that it will “look as big as the full Moon.” Neither of these statements is true.

The confusion exists because Mars and Earth had a relatively close encounter on Aug. 27, 2003, when the two were separated by approximately 34.5 million miles. At the time, it was calculated, Mars and Earth may have been closer together, even if only slightly, than they had been in as many as 60,000 years.

Mars and Earth line up on the same side of the Sun, called an opposition, about every 26 months. But because Mars’s orbit is so stretched out, some oppositions are closer than others, Rouleau explains. Every 17 years or so, Mars is at opposition when it is near perihelion, the closest point to the Sun in its orbit. The spectacular 2003 opposition will be exceeded in 2287, when Mars and Earth get even a little closer still.

Mars can currently be viewed in the early morning sky before sunrise near the “V” that marks the head of Taurus, the Bull. Mars will be slightly brighter than Aldebaran, the brightest star in the “V” of Taurus.

Rouleau said Mars will be at opposition again on Dec. 24, 2007, when it will be approximately 55-million-miles from Earth.

A number of robotic spacecraft are currently in orbit around Mars or are studying the planet on the surface. A new mission, called Phoenix, is scheduled to launch on Aug. 7 for a nine-month trip to the Red Planet.

For more information, contact Rouleau at (817) 272-0822.

Source: UTA

See more stories in:

• Colleges & Universities > University of Texas at Arlington
• Science > Space
• Impending Doom

Comments