The Red Planet is back. On a
clear night you can view Mars. It shines now as a bright reddish-orange star in
the north-eastern sky at about 9:30 p.m. It can be easily identified, since it
is the brightest object in the sky around that time.
Mars will be getting brighter
and closer to Earth, until it reaches its closest distance to Earth on 29
October. Mars will be about 69 million km from the Earth.
On 7 November, Mars will
reach a point in its orbit termed opposition. When at an opposition, Mars is
situated opposite to the Sun in the sky, i.e., it rises in the eastern sky at
sunset and remains visible throughout the night. The Earth then lies between Mars
and the Sun.
![](Mars%20Returns_files/image002.jpg)
Mars rotates about the Sun
every 687 days, or nearly 23 months. The opposition of Mars occurs every 26
months, but not all oppositions are equally near. Sometimes the distance of
Mars at opposition exceeds 100 million km, and under the most favourable conditions, the opposition
distance is about 55 million km. At its farthest point from Earth, Mars is over
400 million km away.
Nearly 26 months ago, on
Wednesday, 27 August, 2003, Mars made the closest approach to Earth in the last
60,000 years. On that day the Earth and Mars were only about 56 million km
apart. (Only our ancestors who lived in the Stone Age enjoyed a slightly closer
opposition of Mars!)
That distance is really very
small compared to the immense cosmic distance scale; but a virtual non-stop
trip by train over the shortest Earth-Mars distance would take over 100
years!
Mars is the fourth planet
from the Sun, and the second closest planet to Earth; only Venus, the second
planet, comes considerably closer to Earth than Mars, at distances of around 40
million km.
Mars is the planet most
closely similar to our planet. The Martian surface can host primitive life
forms.
Due to its red colour, varying brightness
and strange path, Mars has been the most intriguing planet throughout history.
The ancient Egyptians named it Hor Desher "The Red Horus". In Mesopotamia, Mars was the god of the netherworld. In the
Greek and Roman mythologies Mars was the god of war.
Mars is a small world. Our
planet (12,756km across), is nearly twice as large as Mars (6,800km across). Interestingly,
the ratio in size between Mars and the Earth is similar to that between a ping
pong ball and a baseball. The red colour of Mars is due to the presence of iron in its rocks and
soil.
Since its launch into space
in 1990, the legendary Hubble Space Telescope has made many incredible images
of Mars.
Currently there are three
spacecrafts orbiting Mars at a close range, and there are two automatic rovers roaming
the surface of our amazing space
neighbour as robotic geologists.
For more information and
images, please visit the following links.
Hubble Space Telescope Images of Mars
Hubble's
Closest View of Mars
The
Two Faces of Mars
Hubble's
Sharpest View of Mars
A
Global Mars Map
Mars Fact
Sheet
Mars
Aymen Mohamed Ibrahem
PSC,
senior astronomy specialist
aymen.ibrahem@bibalex.org
Ext.:
1735
Mobile: 0102211832