August 27, 2003
Mars Night
Mars Night:
Posted by DeLong at August 27, 2003 12:55 PM | TrackBackAPOD: 2003 August 27 - Big Mars from Hubble
Credit: J. Bell (Cornell U.), M. Wolff (SSI) et al., STScI, NASA
Explanation: At about 10 am Universal Time today, Mars and Earth will pass closer than in nearly 60,000 years. Mars, noticeably red, will be the brightest object in the eastern sky just after sunset. Tonight and through much of this week, many communities around the world are running a public Mars Watch 2003 campaign, where local telescopes will zoom in on the red planet. Pictured above is an image of Mars taken just last night from the Hubble Space Telescope in orbit around the Earth. This image is the most detailed view of Mars ever taken from Earth. Visible features include the south polar cap in white at the image bottom, circular Huygens crater just to the right of the image center, Hellas Impact Basin - the large light circular feature at the lower right, planet-wide light highlands dominated by many smaller craters and large sweeping dark areas dominated by relatively smooth lowlands.
Nice picture, but I'd rather see beautiful red princesses, thoats, and some swordplay.
Posted by: Chuck Nolan on August 27, 2003 04:09 PMWould Hubble or earthbound telescopes be able to pick up the gun flashes from an engagement between the air fleets of Helium and Zodanga?
Posted by: Steven Rogers on August 27, 2003 06:22 PMTo keep up the nattering negativity, I'd like to point out that the whole significance of the moment is that Mars is close now and looks bigger to the naked eye, and a telescope just ruins the whole effect.
But a lot of people are having fun with this, even in a cloudy town like this.
Posted by: zizka on August 27, 2003 08:08 PMYou say, and I've heard it elsewhere, that Mars and Earth are closer than they've been in nearly 60,000 years. But I've also heard that they will again be this close in under 300 years. Why isn't there a constant time between closest approaches? I presume that if the orbits were circular in the same plane then the time between closest approaches would be constant. So is it something to do with eliptical orbits?
Posted by: David Gruen on August 28, 2003 03:16 AMum, brad - a nit:
If it was taken from the Hubble telescope, how is this "the most detailed view of Mars ever taken from Earth"?
Nice picture tho'.
Posted by: Suresh Krishnamoorthy on August 28, 2003 06:56 AMDavid: not only are the orbits eliptical, but the elipses themselves precess around the sun. Thus, their relative orientations vary. Also, for a really close approach not only do the elipses need to line up but the planets need to be in the right places when they do.
This situation is complicated enough that no simple pattern is to be expected.
In addition, the orbit of Mars is perturbed by gravitational fluctuations caused by Jupiter, so that adds even more complexity into the equation.
Posted by: Trickster Paean on August 28, 2003 11:40 AM