NYCkayaker Mars Paddle? August 27th

[peter riley]

Sandy
Not to rain on anyone's parade; I received this from the director of the
Hayden Planetarium...

Nearly everyone I know receives annual e-mails about Mars from an
anonymous source, but sent to them by friends who could not resist
forwarding the message to their entire address book.  The e-mail
declares that at the end of this month (August), the planet Mars will
sit closer to Earth than it has in the past 60,000 years, thereby
offering spectacular views of the Red Planet.  The commentary
proclaims, with liberal use of exclamation marks, that Mars will
appear as bright as (or as large as) the full Moon in the night sky.

This Martian hyperbole dates from August 2003, when the message was
mildly factual, but vastly over-stated, leading people to believe
Mars would be so bright that you might need sunglasses at night while
driving.  The rapid spread of this information was like some sort of
brain info-virus, and led to at least one daily newspaper comic that
showed Mars crashing into a home while the husband and wife were
indoors, debating how close the planet will come.

Every 26 months, or so, Earth makes a close approach to Mars, as our
smaller, swifter orbit "overtakes" Mars around the Sun.  Because both
the orbits of Mars and Earth are mildly elliptical, some close
approaches between the two planets are closer than others, but by
barely perceptible amounts.

So the proximity of Mars to Earth in August 2003, while indeed closer
than in the past 60,000 years, was nonetheless no more meaningful
than me swimming a hundred yards out from the California coast
(instead of my usual seventy yards) and then declaring to the world
"I have never been this close to China before."

During close approaches, Mars slowly becomes one of the brightest
objects in the night sky.  But how bright is that?  Slightly brighter
than Jupiter's' average brightness.  And not as bright as that of
Venus. Yet nobody has ever issued warning statements about the
visibility of Jupiter or Venus.  In any case, Mars has had a "close
approach" 3,000 times in recorded history, and, of course, billions
of times in Earth's history.

Now it's time for you to send this antidote to ail the infected
people in your address book.

As always, keep looking up.

-Neil deGrasse Tyson

Department of Astrophysics
    &  Director, Hayden Planetarium
American Museum of Natural History


> They say... on August 27th at 12:35 pm Mars will be so close that it will
> look like we have 2 moons.
>
>
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