Blogtrek

Mars

Well, here it is, folks. Mars comes closer to us than at any time in the past 60,000 years or so. This is going to attract a lot of people out to see the sky. The media have really hyped this one up. Sure, it comes closer than at any time in the past 60,000 years, but it came almost as close in 1971 and 1988. It came close in 1956, which I remember well, as my parents took me to a skywatch at my school then, when I was 10 years old. I saw several planets, including Mars, through telescopes. It is closer in 2003 but by only a few thousand miles. This is because Mars' perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) has been getting closer and closer to the Sun the past few years, probably because of perturbations from other planets, especially Earth and Jupiter. This can't go on forever; it has to oscillate, else Mars at one time would have been really far out; it would have been at Jupiter's orbit where it would have eventually gotten too close to Jupiter and thrown out of the solar system. So eventually the close approaches will get farther apart again.

Further, there is misinformation out there by the media. Tonight I see that in a side box on a CNN story, CNN says

WHERE IS MARS?
The red planet is now in the constellation Aquarius.
Most viewers can see it in the southeast in the hours after sunset.
By midnight, it will be high overhead.
Before sunrise, it will dip toward the southwestern horizon.

At midnight it will not be overhead, or anywhere near it, except for people in the Southern hemisphere. When Mars comes closest to us at perihelion, it is always in the southern sky, and so it does not get very high. It gets only halfway up in southern Florida, and it may not even clear the trees and houses in places to the north, such as Canada and Minnesota. This is unfortunate, because that makes it harder to see Mars. In any case, CNN should not be stating point blank that it is going to be high.

I have seen the planet several times, with the naked eye and with an 8-inch-aperture telescope, and I have taken a picture of it, which I will put on my astronomy page soon. I find the best way to take a picture of it is to use an extender that allows me to put an eyepiece between the camera and the telescope. I used a 9.7-inch Plössl eyepiece. I probably will take more pictures and view it more, now that it is easily visible in the evening sky; up to now it required waking up in the middle of the night.