Mars has shone particularly bright since mid-May, as it approached and aligned with the Earth and the Sun. As well, the orbit of Mars is slightly inclined compared to Earth’s. The next time Earth and Mars will come that close together is in 2287. Earth is now heading for aphelion (furthest from the Sun in its orbit) on 4 July, while Mars has yet to reach perihelion (closest to the Sun) on 29 October in its orbit of greater eccentricity.
Advertisement
To find the star, wrote Alan MacRobert, a senior editor of Sky & Telescope magazine, “look below Mars by about the width of your fist at arm’s length”. “Mars looks nearly scary now, compared to how it normally looks”. Mars will be more than fifteen million kilometres closer to Earth, drawing to 58 million kilometres. It’s during those biannual windows that NASA typically launches its missions to Mars, keeping the travel time from one planet to the other to a minimum.
Not all close encounters between Earth and Mars are equal, however.
Because Mars is so unusually close, astronomers are getting uniquely clear and detailed images from telescopes like Hubble. Distances between the two planets at this time can vary by over 30 million miles.
According to EarthSky, Saturn will be at its closest to Earth and appear the brightest in the sky on June 3, as it moves to its opposition, or the time when it appears opposite the sun in our sky, rising in the east as the sun sets in the west. When they are on the opposite sides of the sun, an event that occurs once every couple of years, the distance between them can be as much as 249 million miles. The link can be accessed here.
Advertisement
Tonight, Mars will be 46.8 million miles from us. It can be found near the bright red star Antares and the yellow-tinged planet Saturn, forming a lovely jewel-like triangle. Mars will stand out as a bright red/orange light, so it won’t be hard to miss, and will be most visible around 1am (Tuesday). That is Mars zooming in for its closeup, and on Monday May 30 Mother Earth’s neighbor, the fourth planet from the sun, will be the closest it has been to us in more than a decade. To spot Mars in the night sky, face towards the southeast and start looking up. Not far from the end of the Dipper’s handle you’ll see the bright orange star Arcturus, the brightest star in the night sky this month. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore released a picture of Mars on Thursday, which was captured on May 12 from a distance of 50 million miles. This is good preview for next year, when Saturn’s tilt (with respect to us) is at maximum.
