Andrew Yee
October 19th 05, 03:39 PM
Sky & Telescope
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Contacts:
Alan MacRobert, Senior Editor
617-864-7360 x151
Marcy McCreary, VP Mktg. & Business Dev.
617-864-7360 x143
Press Release: October 18, 2005
Mars Looms Big and Bright as It Swings Close to Earth
Note to Editors/Producers: This release is accompanied by
publication-quality graphics; see details below.
Look east late these evenings and you'll see a big, fiery yellow "star"
shining much brighter than any other. This is the planet Mars, and it's
passing unusually close to Earth during late October and early November
2005. Anyone can see it -- no matter how little you know about the stars
or how badly light-polluted your sky may be.
During mid- to late October, look for Mars glaring low in the east after 8
p.m. local daylight-saving time. In November, it's there in view as early
as 6 p.m. standard time. Later in the evening, Mars climbs higher into
better view and shifts over to the southeast. There's nothing else nearly
as bright that you can confuse it with.
Mars will be closest to Earth on the night of October 29*30, passing 43.1
million miles (69.4 million kilometers) from our planet around 11:25 p.m.
on the 29th Eastern Daylight Time. However, Mars will look just about as
big and brilliant for a couple of weeks before and after that date.
Mars is at opposition (opposite the Sun in our sky) on November 7th. This
means it rises at sunset, is up all night, and sets at sunrise.
This is the nearest that Mars has come since its record-breaking close
approach in August 2003. At that time it passed by at a distance of only
34.7 million miles (55.8 million kilometers), the closest it had come in
nearly 60,000 years. But for amateur telescope users, now is still a very
special time. The planet will reach an apparent diameter of 20.2
arcseconds (the angular size of a penny seen at a distance of 620 feet),
offering an usually detailed view of its surface. That compares with 25.1
arcseconds in August 2003 (the angular size of a penny at 500 feet), and
only 15.9 arcseconds at Mars's next swing-by, in December 2007 (a penny at
800 feet).
In fact, not until the summer of 2018 will Mars again come as close to
Earth as it is right now (this statement remains true until mid-November).
Moreover, this year skywatchers at the latitudes of North America and
Europe have a big advantage they didn't have in 2003. That year Mars was
far south in the sky and never got very high for telescope users at
mid-northern latitudes. But this time Mars is farther north and rises
higher during the night, affording a sharper, cleaner view in a telescope
through Earth's blurry atmosphere.
Telescope Tips
Good as this fall's showing is, surface details on Mars are always a
pretty tough target in a telescope. To begin with, Mars is only about half
the size of Earth. Even at its closest, under high magnification it will
appear as only a surprisingly small, bright ball with some subtle dark
markings, possible white clouds around its edges, and perhaps a tiny
remnant of the white South Polar Cap shrunken in the warmth of the Martian
summer. The brightest yellow areas are deserts covered by fine, windblown
dust. The darker markings are terrain displaying more areas of bare rock
or darker sand and dust. Mars rotates every 24 1/2 hours, so you can see
it turning in just an hour or two of watching.
To see much detail on Mars, several things all have to be working in your
favor. You'll need at least a moderately large telescope with high-quality
optics. (For the lowdown on how to select a telescope wisely, see Sky &
Telescope's article "Choosing Your First Telescope".) And you'll need to
wait until Mars rises high in the sky, well above the thick, murky layers
of Earth's atmosphere near the horizon. Moreover, the atmospheric "seeing"
must be good. This is the astronomer's term for the constant fuzzing and
shimmering of highly magnified telescopic images due to the tiny heat
waves that are always rippling through the atmosphere. The seeing changes
from night to night and sometimes from moment to moment.
More about Mars and its unusual close approach appears in the September
issue of Sky & Telescope and in the November/December 2005 issue of Night
Sky, our new bimonthly magazine for beginners.
Sky & Telescope is pleased to make the following publication-quality
graphics available to the news media
[http://skyandtelescope.com/aboutsky/pressreleases/article_1613_1.asp].
Permission is granted for one-time, nonexclusive use in print and
broadcast media, as long as appropriate credits (as noted in each caption)
are included. Web publication must include a link to SkyandTelescope.com .
Sky Publishing Corp. was founded in 1941 by Charles A. Federer Jr. and
Helen Spence Federer, the original editors of Sky & Telescope magazine.
The company's headquarters are in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. In addition to Sky &
Telescope and SkyandTelescope.com, the company publishes Night Sky
magazine (a bimonthly for beginners with a Web site at NightSkyMag.com),
two annuals (Beautiful Universe and SkyWatch), as well as books, star
atlases, posters, prints, globes, and other fine astronomy products.
Related Articles:
* Mars: Which Side Is Visible?
http://skyandtelescope.com/observing/objects/planets/article_997_1.asp
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Contacts:
Alan MacRobert, Senior Editor
617-864-7360 x151
Marcy McCreary, VP Mktg. & Business Dev.
617-864-7360 x143
Press Release: October 18, 2005
Mars Looms Big and Bright as It Swings Close to Earth
Note to Editors/Producers: This release is accompanied by
publication-quality graphics; see details below.
Look east late these evenings and you'll see a big, fiery yellow "star"
shining much brighter than any other. This is the planet Mars, and it's
passing unusually close to Earth during late October and early November
2005. Anyone can see it -- no matter how little you know about the stars
or how badly light-polluted your sky may be.
During mid- to late October, look for Mars glaring low in the east after 8
p.m. local daylight-saving time. In November, it's there in view as early
as 6 p.m. standard time. Later in the evening, Mars climbs higher into
better view and shifts over to the southeast. There's nothing else nearly
as bright that you can confuse it with.
Mars will be closest to Earth on the night of October 29*30, passing 43.1
million miles (69.4 million kilometers) from our planet around 11:25 p.m.
on the 29th Eastern Daylight Time. However, Mars will look just about as
big and brilliant for a couple of weeks before and after that date.
Mars is at opposition (opposite the Sun in our sky) on November 7th. This
means it rises at sunset, is up all night, and sets at sunrise.
This is the nearest that Mars has come since its record-breaking close
approach in August 2003. At that time it passed by at a distance of only
34.7 million miles (55.8 million kilometers), the closest it had come in
nearly 60,000 years. But for amateur telescope users, now is still a very
special time. The planet will reach an apparent diameter of 20.2
arcseconds (the angular size of a penny seen at a distance of 620 feet),
offering an usually detailed view of its surface. That compares with 25.1
arcseconds in August 2003 (the angular size of a penny at 500 feet), and
only 15.9 arcseconds at Mars's next swing-by, in December 2007 (a penny at
800 feet).
In fact, not until the summer of 2018 will Mars again come as close to
Earth as it is right now (this statement remains true until mid-November).
Moreover, this year skywatchers at the latitudes of North America and
Europe have a big advantage they didn't have in 2003. That year Mars was
far south in the sky and never got very high for telescope users at
mid-northern latitudes. But this time Mars is farther north and rises
higher during the night, affording a sharper, cleaner view in a telescope
through Earth's blurry atmosphere.
Telescope Tips
Good as this fall's showing is, surface details on Mars are always a
pretty tough target in a telescope. To begin with, Mars is only about half
the size of Earth. Even at its closest, under high magnification it will
appear as only a surprisingly small, bright ball with some subtle dark
markings, possible white clouds around its edges, and perhaps a tiny
remnant of the white South Polar Cap shrunken in the warmth of the Martian
summer. The brightest yellow areas are deserts covered by fine, windblown
dust. The darker markings are terrain displaying more areas of bare rock
or darker sand and dust. Mars rotates every 24 1/2 hours, so you can see
it turning in just an hour or two of watching.
To see much detail on Mars, several things all have to be working in your
favor. You'll need at least a moderately large telescope with high-quality
optics. (For the lowdown on how to select a telescope wisely, see Sky &
Telescope's article "Choosing Your First Telescope".) And you'll need to
wait until Mars rises high in the sky, well above the thick, murky layers
of Earth's atmosphere near the horizon. Moreover, the atmospheric "seeing"
must be good. This is the astronomer's term for the constant fuzzing and
shimmering of highly magnified telescopic images due to the tiny heat
waves that are always rippling through the atmosphere. The seeing changes
from night to night and sometimes from moment to moment.
More about Mars and its unusual close approach appears in the September
issue of Sky & Telescope and in the November/December 2005 issue of Night
Sky, our new bimonthly magazine for beginners.
Sky & Telescope is pleased to make the following publication-quality
graphics available to the news media
[http://skyandtelescope.com/aboutsky/pressreleases/article_1613_1.asp].
Permission is granted for one-time, nonexclusive use in print and
broadcast media, as long as appropriate credits (as noted in each caption)
are included. Web publication must include a link to SkyandTelescope.com .
Sky Publishing Corp. was founded in 1941 by Charles A. Federer Jr. and
Helen Spence Federer, the original editors of Sky & Telescope magazine.
The company's headquarters are in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. In addition to Sky &
Telescope and SkyandTelescope.com, the company publishes Night Sky
magazine (a bimonthly for beginners with a Web site at NightSkyMag.com),
two annuals (Beautiful Universe and SkyWatch), as well as books, star
atlases, posters, prints, globes, and other fine astronomy products.
Related Articles:
* Mars: Which Side Is Visible?
http://skyandtelescope.com/observing/objects/planets/article_997_1.asp