A bigger orange dot
Posted in Current Events, General, History on January 24th, 2010 by Peter LipscombA description that might occur to people seeing Mars through a telescope for the first time. On Wednesday January 27th, the red planet will be the closest it gets to Earth during the current apparition. Of course, 62 million miles isn’t exactly right around the corner. At its brightest, Mars will rival the visual magnitude of the night sky’s most luminous star, Sirius.
Since Mars’ record opposition of late August 2003 when it reached just under 35 million miles distant, all kinds of Mars-related activity has taken place. Some, like the perennial Mars hoax email, have served to increase misinformation common to pop astronomy. Others spurred on by NASA’s Mars Exploration Program mantra of “follow the water”, have yielded a bonanza of new discoveries and the endless series of questions we must answer to explain them.
