Throw away your telescopes!

This e-mail was sent on to me by a well intentioned (but somewhat astronomically challenged) friend. She wanted to know if it was all true, so here you have it, we no longer need our lenses and mirrors, all you do is wait until the planets come and visit us. I especially like the naked eye bit. I told her it was all true and she should be out on the front lawn around that time looking up.

Coming soon to an in-box near you.

MARS SPECTACULAR



The Red Planet is about to be spectacular! This
month & next The Earth will be catching up with Mars
in an encounter that will soon culminate in the
closest approach between the two planets in our
recorded history.

The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287.
Due to the way Jupiter's gravity tugs on Mars &
perturbs its orbit, astronomers can only be
certain Mars has NOT come this close to Earth in the
last 5,000 years - and it may be as long as 60,000
years before it happens again!

The encounter will culminate on August 27th when
Mars comes to within 34,649,589 miles of Earth & will
be (next to the moon) the brightest object in the
night sky. It will attain a "magnitude of -2.9 & will
appear 25.11 'arc seconds' wide...at a modest
75-power magnification!!

Mars will look as large as the full moon to the
naked eye. It will be easy to spot. At the beginning
of August it will rise in ! the east at 10pm & reach its
azimuth at about 3am.

By the end of August when the two planets are
closest - Mars will rise at nightfall & reach its
highest point in the sky at 12:30am.

That's pretty convenient to see something that no
human being has seen in recorded history. So - mark
your calendar at the beginning of August to see Mars
grow progressively brighter & brighter

throughout the month.

Please share this with your kids & grandchildren,
etc. NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS
AGAIN...!!!

[MiG]

Ahhh, the e-mail that I got left out one very important detail:
"...at a modest
75-power magnification!!"

So it's less ridiculous now because 25" x 75 = 0.52 degrees in the eyepiece. Still not moon size, but only off by a factor of two now. And with a telescope of course.
But it still is baloney isn't it? I thought that a year or two ago, Mars was the closest that it would be for ages.

[Argonavis (William)]

MiG
I thought the Moon was 31 arc sec or about 0.5 degree to the unaided (I don't say naked anymore) eye? Isn't that wot you got?

[MiG]

Originally Posted by Argonavis

MiG
I thought the Moon was 31 arc sec or about 0.5 degree to the unaided (I don't say naked anymore) eye? Isn't that wot you got?

For some reason I thought the moon was 1 degree. It is 0.5 degree as you said. However, 0.5 degree = 30 arc minutes not seconds

First Google result for "mars opposition"
"Mars, our neighbor planet was the closest its been to Earth in 60,000 years on August 27, 2003"

So this e-mail actually is referring to the 2003 opposition. Apart from that it is factual. Under 75x mag, the 25" Mars becomes 0.5 degree. The e-mail that a friend forwarded to me didn't say anything about magnification so I immediately said it's a bunch of crap.

So Nightshift, it is almost correct. It ambiguously specifies 75x mag.

Edit: Decreased rudeness in light of ambiguity.

[Argonavis (William)]

MiG
Correct - should be arc mins.

Note that the statement:
"at a modest 75-power magnification!!"

and

"Mars will look as large as the full moon to the
naked eye."

are separated by a paragraph, so do not run together. And the statement: "Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye" is not qualifed by the sentence in the previous paragraph so appears to be what it says - it is confusing and ambiguous.
Perhaps intentionally to grab the casual readers attention. Almost like "asteriod headed for Earth" (but will miss by 1.5m kms).

Don't u sleep?

[MiG]

Lately I've been sleeping through the 1st half of the day. So I'll go to sleep soon.
Tonight I even have an excuse. I was looking at Mars. Unfortunately seeing sucked. Mars was wobbling with an amplitude larger than its diameter. I also found Uranus for the first time tonight.

Back to the topic. Yes it's ambigious. In light of this I've edited my previous post. However to me the magnification section really stood out because my version omitted it. Now that is downright evil.

[iceman (Mike)]

That email has been going around for a while, and there's various versions of it, some claiming that Mars will be as bright as the full moon, and others claiming it will be the brightest thing in the sky after to the moon.

But it's still 2 years out of date. It's like the media claiming that the impact on tempel 1 will make it naked eye visibility.

The e-mail quotes "Mars will look as large as the full moon to the
naked eye."Nothing ambigious here, Mars will not look as big as the moon to the naked eye now or back in 2003, it may be as bright but not as big. In a telescope it may look as big but then so would Pluto given the aperture and a billion X's eyepiece. As for dates and times, they too are incorrect for 2005 but I guess may have been correct for 2003. And yes, no wonder the general public think that the horsehead nebula should look just like hubbles pics of it to the naked eye. I do get a bit peeved with the media when they blow these things out of proportion, as a presenter at the Mapleton observatory which is designed for public viewing, Paul (1ponders) and I are the one's that have to burst the bubble for these people, they somehow want to blame us for the bad news. Ahh such is the life of an ametuer Astronomer.

[dhumpie]

I got this one as well. A friend of mine who just got a scope also asked me the same question. My reply was that it will appear bigger in scopes...but it will not appear as big as the moon with the naked eye.....geeze wonder who wrote this...

Darren

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Originally Posted by dhumpie

.....geeze wonder who wrote this...

Darren

Probably some astrologer

[MiG]

What it is saying it that under 75 times magnification Mars will look as big as the moon does at 1 times. So basically it is saying that you'll only need a Tasco 60 mm refractor to see Mars the same size as the moon. But it does this badly. And the dates and figures correspond to the 2003 opposition. That is all.