Grab your telescopes and binoculars, folks: this weekend, Mars reaches “opposition,” meaning that it will be exactly opposite the sun in Earth’s sky and will thus be shining more brightly than at any other time during the year, making it an ideal time to hunt for the Red Planet.
During opposition, Mars will rise as the sun sets and set as the run rises, according to Space.com, and will be visible all night long on Saturday and Sunday. The exact time that it will first become visible varies by location, but it will be visible for longer periods of time in the south.
Catching a glimpse of the Red Planet will be easy, NPR explained. Shortly after the sun sets, go outside and look towards the southeastern part of the sky. Locate the full moon, which should be an easy task, and then look for what appears to be a bright red star to its right. That’s Mars.
In addition to being extremely bright, Mars will be the closest it’s been to Earth in more than 10 years on Sunday, according to EarthSky. At a distance of 46.78 million miles (75.28 million km), the planet will the closest it’s been to Earth since it’s November 2005 opposition.
After its opposition, Mars will begin to gradually fade in brightness, the website said. However, this year’s event is an “awesome” opportunity to catch a glimpse of the planet, as it “will briefly match the brightness of Jupiter, currently the brightest starlike object in the evening sky (since Venus is now behind the sun).”
More about Mars and its upcoming opposition
Why is this event called an opposition? As NASA scientist Michelle Thaller told NPR, the name dates back to a time when astronomers held “a more Earth-centric view” of the solar system, and it seems fitting, as it looks as though Mars and the sun are on opposite sides of the sky.
While this year’s opposition event will bring Mars closer than it has been in over a decade, it still is not the closest it has ever been. According to EarthSky, the greatest/closest opposition of Mars since the Stone Age took place in August 2003, as the planet was just 34.65 million miles (55.76 million km) from the Earth. That record is not expected to fall until August 2287.
Earlier this week, to mark the occasion, NASA revealed new up-close images of Mars captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, and those photographs show the planet’s polar caps and clouds floating above the rust-colored surface of the planet. The images were taken by the telescope on May 12, when Mars was 50 million miles away, and reveal details as small as just 20 to 30 miles across, according to the US space agency.
“The biennial close approaches between Mars and Earth are not all the same,” explained NASA. “Mars’ orbit around the sun is markedly elliptical; the close approaches to Earth can range from 35 million to 63 million miles. They occur because about every two years Earth’s orbit catches up to Mars’ orbit, aligning the sun, Earth, and Mars in a straight line.”
“This phenomenon is a result of the difference in orbital periods between Earth’s orbit and Mars’ orbit. While Earth takes the familiar 365 days to travel once around the sun, Mars takes 687 Earth days to make its trip around our star,” the agency added. “ As a result, Earth makes almost two full orbits in the time it takes Mars to make just one, resulting in the occurrence of Martian oppositions about every 26 months.”
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An artists’s impression of what Mars might have looked like 4 billion years ago. Image credit: ESO
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