Mars

[SteveDallas]

If you're even just a tiny bit interested in astronomy, you owe it to yourself to get your butt out from in front of the computer and take a look at Mars. You've probably read by now that it will be closer to the Earth this week than it has been in the last 59,000-odd years. In reality, there is not enough of a size difference to make a difference in observing it compared to other close approaches (it reached an apparent size of 24.9 arc seconds in 1971; this year it will be at 25.11), but hey. A record is a record.

It's almost certain that some club, school, or college observatory near you will be sponsoring an opportunity for you to look at Mars through a telescope. For those in the Philadelphia area, the Delaware Valley Amateur Astronomers group is a good bet. For everyone else, Sky and Telescope has a listing of clubs and observatories.

I personally saw Mars through my telescope for the first time this season last night. (Between cloudy nights and bronchitis and just not being able to drag myself out of bed at 4 AM, I had to wait for it to appear earlier in the evening.) It didn't disappoint! Though the surface features were subtle, I could make out some of the dark areas, and the south polar cap was a prominent bright white.

What you see through a telescope won't match the detail of images from the Hubble Space Telescope or the various Mars orbiters, but there's a special magic about live viewing through a telescope.

[Uryoces]

Here's what Mars would have looked like at about 12:30 this morning. I did see it in a telescope, but all I could see was that it was a disk, but no detail. It looked like a orange LED held at arms length. I definitely would have needed better equipment.

There's water on that there planet!

[xoxoxoBruce]

Check out the rotation.