Reply to "The Night of the Shooting Stars"

There is a good article about the close encounter of
Mars and Earth in Time magazine this week.
here is a brief summary:

Volcanoes dot the planet Mars. Olympus Mons is more than twice as tall as Mount Everest.
Valles Marineris is five times as long and four times as deep as the Grand Canyon.


On August 27th Mars will approximate
Earth to within 55,683.33 Km.
It hasn't been this close, or this bright, in
60,000 thousand years. If you miss the 27th, there will still be an excellent view for the next few weeks.
Mars will be a brilliant red object that arises in the east, just at sunset, and continues to climb higher throughout the evening. Only the moon will outshine Mars.

Scientists believe that Mars might have harbored life in the distant past -- and that some micro-organisms could still be beneath Mars' frozen surface. There are several probes on the way to Mars in search of subsurface water.

Mars' orbit is not quite circular, it is elliptical, so its sometimes closer and sometimes farther from the sun. (Earth's orbit is also elliptical, but much less )so when the Earth catches up at a time when Mars is relatively near the sun, there is an especially close encounter.
The next close encounter which will break this record is in the year 2287 -- they will be
64,400 Km closer.

[This message was edited by Inda on Wednesday August 27th, 2003 at 06:19 PM.]