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The Martians are coming
Last post 05-27-2009 03:26 PM by TeleTaurus7. 14 replies.
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  • 04-25-2009 12:33 PM

    • savyone
    • Joined on 04-22-2009
    • Yucaipa, California
    • Posts 42

    The Martians are coming

    Is it true, that on Aug 27th, Mars will be closer to the earth than anyother time in recorded history? My source reported that it will be the brightest object in the sky with a magnitude of -2.9 and be 25.11 arc seconds across. (At 75x in a modest telescope, it would appear to be the size of a full moon to the unaided eye. If this IS a fact, it will be an awesome spectacle...

    Can anyone verify this to be true?

    Thanks, Randy

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  • 04-25-2009 01:10 PM In reply to

    Re: The Martians are coming

    Complete bull.

    That happened in August of 2003 and it was not at all like the Internet hoax that goes around. Every year the hoax reappears.

    Mars' closest approach this year will be in December but it will be far from spectacular.

    Sorry ...

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  • 04-25-2009 03:12 PM In reply to

    • WannaB
    • Joined on 04-30-2008
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    Re: The Martians are coming

    That's too bad.  We could have maybe seen those little buggers riding around on the rovers!

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  • 04-26-2009 12:05 PM In reply to

    Re: The Martians are coming

     I'm sure they've gotten bored of playing with the remains of Beagle 2!

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  • 04-26-2009 08:30 PM In reply to

    Re: The Martians are coming

    savyone:

    Is it true, that on Aug 27th, Mars will be closer to the earth than anyother time in recorded history? My source reported that it will be the brightest object in the sky with a magnitude of -2.9 and be 25.11 arc seconds across. (At 75x in a modest telescope, it would appear to be the size of a full moon to the unaided eye. If this IS a fact, it will be an awesome spectacle...

    Can anyone verify this to be true?

    Thanks, Randy

    Welcome to the discussion group, Randy.

     

    It’s amazing that this nearly six-year-old article is still circulating on the internet.  It was great news in 2003.  It usually resurfaces during August of each year, so I’m surprised you saw it in April.  In many cases the information becomes distorted, but what you wrote seems to be accurate for 2003 AUG 27.  The problem was that the author did not provide a year, apparently assuming that it would only be read in 2003.  Nevertheless, someone keeps re-circulating it.  I saw the event in 2003 and it was spectacular.

     

    Below is a graphic I created to illustrate the relative positions of Earth and Mars at oppositions, i.e. when Earth comes between Mars and the Sun.  This occurs on an average of once every 2.135 years.  Every 15 or 17 years the planets come particularly close.  The event of 2003 was the closest in more than 50,000 years.  A closer one will not come until 2287, but the opposition of 2018 will be quite good, especially for southern hemisphere observers.

     

     

     

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  • 05-20-2009 02:24 PM In reply to

    Re: The Martians are coming

    Sorry, my original graphic left out an important detail.  Below is the corrected version. 

      

     

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  • 05-20-2009 02:37 PM In reply to

    Re: The Martians are coming

    Now it all makes sense!  Thanks for the chuckle, Curt.

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  • 05-20-2009 03:01 PM In reply to

    Re: The Martians are coming

    Centaur:

    Sorry, my original graphic left out an important detail.  Below is the corrected version. 

      

     

     

    And some real hard to understand celestial mechanics involved too! 

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  • 05-21-2009 11:47 AM In reply to

    Re: The Martians are coming

    So, I guess that the grand showing on Boxing Day of Comet Kohoutek is out too, eh?

    Got to love the internet.

    L

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  • 05-22-2009 07:07 AM In reply to

    • Starwolf
    • Joined on 03-26-2006
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    • Posts 947

    Re: The Martians are coming

    If Mars were to appear as large as the full moon...throw a massive party. It will be your last before the Earth and Mars slam into one another...

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  • 05-23-2009 01:30 PM In reply to

    Re: The Martians are coming

    I would not use the term hoax.  I’d call it a comedy of errors.

    If I were a police profiler, here is what I would hypothesize. I see a teenager who had recently gotten into both astronomy and producing PowerPoint presentations. When he read reports of Mars making a close approach in 2003, he saw an opportunity to impress and excite his friends by announcing the astronomical event with a PowerPoint presentation. He cut and pasted some text which included dates but not the year, which seemed unnecessary since it was published that year. For dramatic effect, he mentioned the need for magnification on one slide and then displayed a magnified image of Mars next to a Full Moon on the next slide. Although it was not his intent, some sloppy readers took no notice of the mention of the need for magnification. Meanwhile, the presenter overlooked the power of the internet grapevine to keep information circulating even after it had become outdated. His leaving out the year was an error, but it’s understandable if he cut and pasted from sources that also left out the year.

    While my attempt to profile is pure speculation, I nevertheless feel the term hoax is inappropriate. Hoax implies intentional deceit. I can understand how some of us in the astronomical community get annoyed by this Mars announcement every year and want to “blame” somebody. Let’s not blame the perpetrator for intentional mischievousness, but instead for unbridled enthusiasm which got him trapped into overlooking possible consequences.

    This Mars misunderstanding is not a matter of great importance. Distortions of political or larger scientific questions can be more harmful. Nevertheless, the lesson to be learned is that the originators, redistributors and consumers of information on the internet need to always be careful, keep a skeptical eye open and apply astute judgment.

     

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  • 05-23-2009 06:15 PM In reply to

    • ajohnson
    • Joined on 05-14-2008
    • Riverside, CA
    • Posts 126

    Re: The Martians are coming

    snopes has a good writeup on it at http://www.snopes.com/science/astronomy/brightmars.asp

     

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  • 05-27-2009 10:26 AM In reply to

    • Leenda
    • Joined on 05-08-2009
    • Lawrence, KS
    • Posts 18

    Re: The Martians are coming

    Anyone see "Non Sequitur" (comic strip) today? They mention Mars looking as large as the Moon. The punchline is about stopping Mars from crashing into the earth... makes me think they saw the above graphic.

    This link might work: http://news.yahoo.com/comics/uclickcomics/20090527/cx_nq_uc/nq20090527

     

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  • 05-27-2009 11:05 AM In reply to

    Re: The Martians are coming

     Nice.
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  • 05-27-2009 03:26 PM In reply to

    Re: The Martians are coming

     It would be pretty awesome if it were true

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