Mars will be the brightest it’s been in two years as it undergoes what’s called Mars opposition, an orbital placement that puts the Earth directly between the sun and the Red Planet.
Advertisement
On Sunday, Mars, Earth and the sun will be perfectly aligned. Martian oppositions usually occur at an average period of 780 days where the last time that the sun, the Earth and Mars are all lined up in their orbits was April 2014.
There are various tools and data provided by the U. S. Naval Observatory to determine whether Mars is in eyeshot in the area.
The easiest way to spot Mars this weekend is to go out when the Red Planet is highest in the sky, close to midnight local time.
Taking advantage of the closeness between the two planets, the Hubble Space Telescope snapped a photograph of Mars earlier this week.
“But even if you have a small telescope, the disc of Mars will be big enough to see details and maybe even the polar cap”. Once you see the full moon, you may see a bright red star to the right of our Moon, with that bright red star being none other than Mars. As a result, the red planet will glow about 80 times brighter than usual.
A planet is at opposition when it is directly opposite the Sun from our viewpoint on Earth. 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. This just happens to collide with an opportunity to see Mars closely.
The night sky in May will be extra special, with Mars coming the closest to Earth as it has been since November 25.
Advertisement
In this new image captured by Hubble, taken by its Wide Field Camera 3 instrument, Mars is shown in a natural color view, where many of its geological features are visible, such as mountains, canyons, plains and craters.
