I've received a few enquiries about the appearance of Mars later this month and in response have prepared the following picture, based on an image I took of Mars and the Moon before last New Moon.
Good work Tom Dont know why no-one has thought of this before ?
Definately needs shairing & and thinking of having your name on it, but then again, dont need swamps of emails Lol, , never hear the end of it
That's a nice explanatory graphic Tom. Does anyone have a theory as to why this hoax was started? I haven't seen any emails purporting Mars being larger than the moon, so from my perspective someone has put a lot of creative imagination in even coming up with such an idea!
Brilliant graphic. Posted a link and the image to FaceBook, Google+ and Twitter with a link back to here. Donna Burton picked it up and included in in "Astronomy News Daily": http://t.co/E2q5TEqmz7. Fame should soon follow for your efforts!
>>That's a nice explanatory graphic Tom. Does anyone have a theory as to why this hoax was started?<<
It started in 2003 when Mars was closer than it has been in 60,000 years. The press just got a bit over-exuberant about how close it actually was.
I thought that the original cause was the idea that through a telescope at some non specified magnification, mars would be the same angular size as the full moon viewed with the naked eye. This applied years ago when Mars was relatively close to earth.
This idea got corrupted and the hoax is the result.