>I recently received, in my e-mail, the usual nonsense about Mars, something like this:
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>"On August 27, 30 minutes past midnight, look at the sky. Planet Mars will be the brightest star in the sky; he will be as big as the full moon. Mars will be at a distance of 55.75 million km. from planet Earth."
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>The message also claims that nobody alive now will ever have this opportunity again.
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>Since similar e-mails have been circulating for some years, here are the facts.
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>"Opposition" means that an outer planet, like Mars, is in a position opposite to the Sun - when the Sun sets in the west, the planet arises in the east. The opposition is approximately the point of the closesta pproach. This is not exact, since the planets' orbits (and especially the orbit of Mars) are not exactly circular.
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>In the case of Mars, the distance, in opposition, can be somewhere between 50 and 100 million km., approximately. In opposition, in some cases Mars is brighter than planet Jupiter. This means that Mars can be the second-brightest star in the sky, after planet Venus. Under no circumstances will Mars look bigger, or be brighter, than the full Moon!
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>When a planet is in opposition, this is not an event that has to be observed at an exact minute, or hour. During several weeks, the planet will be fairly close to Earth. The change will be gradual, just as (for example), Summer Solstice can be calculated to the minute, but the longest day is not noticeably longer, or hotter, than a week earlier, or later.
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>Finally, in reality, the next opposition of planet Mars will be on Jan. 29, 2010 (data from Kosmos "Himmelsjahr" 2009, published in the German language). Oppositions of planet Mars occur approximately every 2 years.
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>The information from the e-mail apparently originated in an opposition, a few years ago (in August). It was amply published that Mars would not be as close, again, in another 50,000 years or something. True, perhaps; but there will be similar oppositions, every few years, where Mars is only a few percent (or less than one percent) farther than in the opposition mentioned. The difference would be imperceptible for a human observer; under no circumstances will Mars have "the size of the full Moon". So this "close approach" is only of academic interest, as they say.


LOL - I've had that one arrive in my mailbox several times over the years. Even when it was valid, it was a lie. :))