MARS... wanna see it????
 

MARK AUGUST 27th ON YOUR CALENDAR
MARS WILL APPEAR AS BIG AS THE MOON!

FIRST TIME IN AT LEAST 5,000 YEARS!

Never again in your lifetime will the Red Planet be so spectacular!

This month and next, Earth is catching up with Mars, an encounter that will
culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history.
The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287. Due to the way Jupiter's
gravity tugs on Mars and perturbs its orbit, astronomers can only be certain
that Mars has not come this close to Earth in the last 5,000 years but it may
be as long as 60,000 years.

On August 27, Mars will come within 34,649,589 miles and will be (next to the
moon) the brightest object in the night sky. It will attain a magnitude of
- 2.9 and will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide. At a modest 75-power magnification
Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye.

Mars will be easy to spot. At the beginning of August, Mars will rise in
the east at 10 p.m. and reach its azimuth at about 3 a.m. But by the end of
August when the two planets are closest, Mars will rise at nightfall and reach

its highest point in the sky at 12:30 a.m. That's pretty convenient when it
comes to seeing something that no human has seen in recorded history. So mark

your calendar at the beginning of August to see Mars grow progressively brighter
and brighter throughout the month.

Share with your friends, children and grandchildren.
No one alive today will ever see this again!


just thought I'd share!!!

wow this is almost as rare as when cue is in scarborough, hah j/k

that post is way too spectacular, the words cue brings into his vocabulary just blew me out of my seat, now i know who to ask for to help me write my english essays
cue is the english god :_bow: :_bow:

hahhahahaha
so are we having a 7thgen meet for watching the MARS? :D :D

Haa Haa, we should :cool:

nah... this is something to rare and sentimental... I think I'll be spending it with my g/f... at a 7thgen meet!!! HAHAHA :)

If there's a meet, I'll come out. If there isn't, I'm gonna sit in my backyard and drink.

Hey telly, have you ever seen a gold 1.6el. I was at markham honda and it was lowered and a custom bumpeer and a carbon fiber lip. Just wondering if you know this person and know what kind of kit it was,

thanks,

Does anybody know exactly what time we should look out the window? Space watching is nerdy, but if it's once in a multi-lifetime experience, then I gosta see it!!

ppl living in this generation is pretty damn lucky. we went thru all these comets, the solar eclips, meteor shower and a couple other cool stuff that happens only once in a couple hundred or thousand yrs.... and now mars!! ... also ... the blackout last night... i'm loving this!!

i think i know which one ur talking about. does it have a huge ass metalic spoiler that's placed close to the trunk?

most of the time .. ti's a guy driving it .. b ut sometimes a chick.

so wanna make it a west end MARS meet on 27th? keke

yeah bumdup, it has a massive spoiler. Just asking for a friend what kind of rear bumper and lip it is.

big as the moon? uh, NO

it'll look as bright as an airplane in the sky, brighter even than Venus, the usual brightest object in the sky after the Sun and the Moon, but it's definetly NOT going to look as big as the Moon!!!

However!

Go find a small telescope or really good binoculars, and you'll likely be able to see details on Mars like the ice caps, it's close enough for that.

Easiest way to find it, look near where the moon is, it's going to be near it for the next couple nights. The bright reddish dot in the sky is it. My friends thought it was a light on top of an apartment when it was down low in the sky until I pointed it out to them. yes, it's that bright.

just wondering.. would that be 12:30am as of august 27th??? or the 28th??

for those that stared into the night the day of the blackout ... did u guys notice a very very small spec of white light moving at a steady pace thru the sky? there was a few of them from time to time. if it was a plane ... i think it would have white and red flashing lights... and no ... it's definately not a shooting star... too slow for a shooting star.

a girl i was with pointed one out... could be a comet
there's millions out there that fly by earth all the time... supposedly

space: whole lotta ****ing space out there... :)

...........
oi, I feel like such a geek for this, but you guys need a major astronomy lesson

the slow moving lights very well could be "shooting stars" more appropriately known as meteors. There can look both slow moving and fast moving. Or, you may have seen a satellite. It is DEFINETLY not a comet. Comets, when they are visible, look like they are not moving at all. Even though they are moving very fast through space, they are much further away and so look like they just sitting still in space.

There are millions of small rocks/meteors/comets out there, yes, but very rarely will you see any. To see those small rocks/meteors, they'd have to hit our atmosphere and burn up, showing up as shooting stars. Comets on the other hand, are very dark and very far away, unless they are large enough, you will not see the typical comet's tail or anything at all without a telescope.

it won't matter if you look on the 27th or 28th really, I'm not sure when the night of closest approach will actually be, but you won't be able to tell the difference between one night or another for a couple weeks at least. After that however, Mars will just start looking dimmer.

back to the slow moving light thing.....other possibility it could be is an airplane that's flying straight towards you, but who knows, maybe you saw an alien that night :D

http://chanhome.dynup.net/~naito/pic...5-IMG_0616.jpg

pic of the moon and Mars, the bright dot on the right, taken night of the blackout arond midnight

the night the power went out..... Mars was BRIGHT..... i went outside around 9:30... the sky was pitch black.... the moon wasn't out yet.... and there was this BRIGHT red spec..... man that night was AWSOME for lookin at the sky.... i've never seen that many stars b4.....

Im glad someone said it. I was going to as well.

The reason it will be so bright on the 27 is b/c of new moon. aka no moon

Its only 55.76 km away form earth. Why dont we have a meet on MARS.

oops i meant 55.76 million km away :_doh:

oops i meant 55.76 million km away :_doh:

oops i posted twice :_doh:

here's the Internet article

And here's why it's gonna be almost the size of the moon...

I'm just going by what I hear is gonna happen... don't believe it?? Too bad! :)

Not as big as the moon (i think) you mean the second brightest to the moon

NO NO NO NO NO!!! damnit

YES Mars is passing unusually close to Earth. but in NEITHER OF THOSE ARTICLES does it state that it'll look as big as the moon!!!

I don't know how u got taht out of there. It will be the brightes object in the sky after the sun and the moon this August, but it's not going to look so exceptionally big!
well, maybe if ur eyes are really bad and you see everything as a big round disc anyway. =p

simpliest way for me to put it....THINK about it.....it looks like a dot now.....do you REALLY think it's going look THAT much bigger in a week???

I'm honestly not sure if it is going to be as big as the moon or whatever but that's what I've read.. And by looking at Mars' orbit in relation to our planet... they do get closer to eash other, supposedly on that date...
exhibit A:

http://www.saao.ac.za/news/aug_2003.jpg

if that does happen... if should be pretty BIG, IMO..

if I base my answer on the picture above, ummm.... YEAH!!!

Isn't mars bigger than earth??? :confused: I don't know...
but if it is alot bigger than Earth, then at that distance it should look as if it's the same size as the moon.
I'm not an astronaut or anything, nor do I study space... BUT I DID STAY AT HOLIDAY INN LAST NIGHT!! :_doh: oh, and I watch alot of TLC... hehehe