READ THIS AND DUN FALL FOR THE EMAIL:
There is an email circulating in cyberspace saying that the red planet Mars will be exceptionally close on 27 August (2006). According to one version “It will look like the Earth has two moons”!!!
Once again this is a good lesson in not believing everything on the Internet. The email is a hoax describing in a somewhat exaggerated fashion the events of 2003. On 27 August 2003 Mars was only 55.8 million kilometers away which is almost the closest possible distance it can be from Earth. To the unaided eye it looked like a shining red beacon while through a telescope a small red disc could be seen with some dark features visible.
Mars did make an extraordinarily close approach to Earth several years ago, culminating on 27 August 2003, when the red planet came within 35 million miles (or 56 million kilometers) of Earth, its nearest approach to us in almost 60,000 years. At that time, Mars appeared approximately 6 times larger and 85 times brighter in the sky than it ordinarily does. (The message quoted above was often reproduced with an unfortunate line break in the middle of the second sentence of the second paragraph, leaving some readers with the mistaken impression that Mars would "look as large as the full moon to the naked eye" and not realizing that the statement only applied to those viewing Mars through a scope with 75-power magnification.)
Although Mars' proximity to Earth in August 2003 (referred to as a perihelic opposition) was a rare occurrence, the red planet comes almost as near to us every 15 to 17 years. To the unaided observer, Mars' appearance in August 2003 wasn't significantly larger or brighter than it is during those much more common intervals of closeness. Mars had another close encounter with Earth in 2005, but that occurrence took place in October (not August), and the red planet appeared about 20% smaller than it did during similar circumstances in 2003.
