Starship Asterisk*

Mars will be very close to earth in Aug. any Ideas on how to best view ? trickstar

trickstar wrote:Mars will be very close to earth in Aug. any Ideas on how to best view ? trickstar

Mars is currently rather far from the Earth, and is getting farther. It was last at opposition a few months ago, and will be at opposition again in early 2012. It is currently only about 5 arcseconds across (and will down to 4 next month). That is certainly large enough to resolve as a disc in a small telescope, but don't expect to see much in the way of surface detail. For that you'll have to wait nearly two years, and even then the opposition distance will be large, with Mars's apparent size only about half of what it was a few years ago during oppositions. In February of 2012 it will be 14 arcseconds, compared with 25 arcseconds back in 2003. So even in 2012, the opposition view will be pretty poor.

Hope you didn't fall for that internet myth that circulated back in August 2003 about Mars being the size of the moon. That is the only August reference I know of and has been recirculated a couple of times.

Yeah the planets aren't "behaving" lately. Saturn is conveniently visible in the early evening but its rings are still nearly edge on to us.


I must say it's been pretty to see Venus, Mars and Saturn in a row each night (now that we have clear skies with some regularity - in the NW we spend a lot of months under clouds).