It's that time of the year again. Every summer, since 2003, we've had emails surging around the Internet waxing eloquent about how Mars is going to be super close to the earth and super big in the sky etc. etc.
Well, sorry to say, it's not true. Sky and Telescope has a good article on this annual phenomenon. Space dot com has a writeup on it as well.
Here is a web cam - telescope image I took of Mars back in 2003, when it was indeed closer to the Earth than usual. But to the naked eye, Mars was still just a bright red dot in the sky.
This morning, Mars, Venus, and the Moon made a nice little triangle in the pre-dawn sky. Unfortunately, I forgot to go out and look. It was probably too cloudy anyway, but we'll never know for sure...
So if you receive the annual Mars email, and you probably will, resist the urge to enthusiastically forward it to all your friends. :) Instead, forward this blog to all your friends. LOL
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