>>MARK AUGUST 27th ON YOUR CALDENDAR
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>>MARS WILL APPEAR AS BIG AS THE MOON! FIRST TIME IN AT LEAST 5,000 YEARS!
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>>Never again in your lifetime will the Red Planet be so spectacular!
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>>This month and next, Earth is catching up with Mars, 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.
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>>On August 27, Mars will come within 34,649,589 miles 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.
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>>Mars will be easy to spot. At the beginning of August, Mars will rise in the east at 10 p.m. and reach its azimuth at about 3 a.m. But 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 when it comes to seeing something that no human 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.
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>>Share with your friends, children and grandchildren. No one alive today will ever see this again!
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>Let me add some additional information.
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>As you have already been told, Mars will definitely not be as big (nor as bright) as the moon. It will be the brightest "star" in the sky - but only because Venus happens not to appear these days.
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>Also, the fact that it won't come this close in the next 2000 years doesn't make it as spectacular as you might think - every 10 years or so, it will come almost as close, but not quite.
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>Every two years, approximately, Mars comes into "opposition" to the Sun. This means that Mars is opposite to the Sun - at sunset, Mars will rise.
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>Since Mars has a fairly elliptical orbit, this opposition can sometimes be closer to the Earth, sometimes farther. The difference is considerable: at the closest oppositions, Mars can approach us at a distance of something like 56 million km.; at the farthest opposition, it is more than 100 million km. This makes for a difference in brightness - a ratio of 1:5. Of course, when Mars is NOT in opposition, Mars is even farther away from Earth (up to 400 million km.), and even dimmer.
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>According to Das Himmelsjahr (an astronomical annuary, in German), Mars will have a brightness of -2.9m. (The original brightness scale, some 2000 years ago, classified the brightest stars as 1m, the weakest that could be seen as 6m; the scale used today is more precise, and uses negative numbers for stars that are even brighter than a standard of 1m or 0m. In general, a difference of 1m is approximately equivalent to a ratio of 1:2.5.)
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>To find Mars, simply look for a bright star that is just rising, immediately after sunset. You can already see Mars as a bright star now; but before the opposition (Das Himmelsjahr indicates August 28, the time is 18 hours UTC - minutes are not indicated), Mars will rise somewhat later.
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>As to the opposition distance, this time Mars approaches us at a distance of 55.76 million km. - that is only 0.373 astronomical units (Earth-Sun distances).

Oh well, and I "was" looking forward to that......

Kev