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Earth gears up for brush with Mars
« on: Aug 26th, 2003, 2:50am » |
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Earth gears up for brush with Mars
Monday, August 25, 2003 Posted: 2:45 PM EDT (1845 GMT)
LOS ANGELES, United States (AP) -- The wandering of the planets will bring Mars closer to Earth this month than at any time in nearly 60,000 years.
It will be a last-chance proposition for all alive today: Mars won't be as close again until August 28, 2287.
Just 55.67 million kilometers (34.6 million miles) of space will separate the two planets on August 27. If that doesn't sound close, Mars was five times as distant just six months ago.
Already, Mars has begun to loom large in the late evening sky, its rusty twinkle apparent in the southeast. For the next several weeks the fourth rock from the sun should shine brighter than any other celestial body -- save the moon and Venus.
"Mars you can't miss, it's bright and red," said Myles Standish, an astronomer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Aldo Vitagliano, of the University of Naples in Italy, calculated that Mars hasn't had as close a brush with Earth since Sept. 12, 57,617 B.C., when Neanderthals ruled but modern man had begun to make inroads.
The Red Planet still will seem small though. Even though Mars is twice the size of the moon, it will be 145 times as distant.
With binoculars, or better yet a telescope, observers can start to pick out details on the planet's surface. The view from even a modest telescope should reveal the planet's southern ice cap, Beatty said.
Next week, astronomers will send radio waves from antennas on Earth that will bounce off Mars to study the terrain where one of the two NASA rovers is targeted to land in January.
The close proximity will improve the resolution of the radar images, said Albert Haldemann, deputy project scientist for the rover mission.
Planetariums around the world plan Mars-gazing parties beginning the evening of August 26, and the Hubble Space Telescope is expected to take a close-approach portrait of Mars.
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