- On Aug. 27, Mars will be 'only' 34,646,418 miles away.
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- Talk about once-in-a-lifetime visits: During the next
few weeks, our planetary neighbor -- Mars -- glides ever closer, ultimately
making its nearest approach to Earth in all of recorded history.
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- ''The last time people looked up and saw this, Neanderthal
man saw it,'' said Jack Horkheimer, executive director of the planetarium
at the Miami Museum of Science and Planetarium. ``This is going to be so
stunning.''
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- The reason: By Aug. 27, Mars will be ''only'' 34,646,418
miles away, pretty much the galactic equivalent of idling in our driveway.
With a little bit of luck, the view will be spectacular.
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- And you don't have to wait until the end of the month.
Mars already is much closer and appears much brighter and larger in the
southeast sky than it did at the beginning of July, when it was 52 million
miles away.
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- Observers have been giving the light show glowing reviews.
Astronomers say you have never seen anything like this. Neither have your
parents. Or their parents. Or . . . well, you get the idea.
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- All experts agree that Mars hasn't been this close in
at least 5,000 years. Most astronomical calculations raise those estimates
to 59,619 years.
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- ''I've already been watching, and over the next several
weeks it will be getting bigger and brighter,'' said astronomer David Menke
of Plantation, former director of the Buehler Planetarium on the Broward
Community College campus in Davie. ``It will just be fabulous.''
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- GRAVITATIONAL DUET
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- Every day brings Mars closer, the result of a gravitational
duet around the sun that produces neighborly visits every 26 months but
rarely such close encounters.
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- The condition that will occur on Aug. 27 is called ''opposition''
-- when the sun, Earth and Mars form a straight line, bringing Mars and
Earth relatively close.
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- But the elliptical orbits of planets make some oppositions
closer than others.
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- This one is so close that sky watchers using nothing
but their eyes might be able to tell if Mars is awash in dust storms. It
turns out that the Red Planet is not always so red, especially when viewed
from Earth.
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- ''If it appears to be mostly gold with no hint of ruby
whatsoever, you're probably seeing a dust storm on the planet,'' Horkheimer
said.
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- ''If you see a hint of red with the naked eye, you're
seeing the surface,'' he said.
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- And if you use even an inexpensive, 100-power telescope,
you might be able to discern Mars' southern ice cap -- though Earth's shimmering
atmosphere often frustrates viewers.
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- Long a source of fascination for Earthlings, Mars continues
to intrigue scientists, who have recently determined that the ice cap is
made from water rather than frozen carbon dioxide.
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- That, of course, raises profound new questions: How much
water once existed on Mars? How much still exists underground? What does
this imply about the prospect of life on Mars?
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- SCIENTIFIC PROBES
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- A new squadron of scientific probes -- including two
ground rovers -- is en route to the planet, and experts hope the devices
will help unravel some of these mysteries. In addition, visionaries still
muse about human colonization of Earth's closest planetary neighbor.
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- ''Mars has always captured our imaginations,'' said Menke,
who teaches at Coral Springs High School. ``Its blood-red color made it
representative of the god of war and there's always been a lot of folk
lore associated with Mars.''
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- So, you'll probably want to catch this opportunity rather
than wait for the next ''perfect opposition'' of Earth and Mars.
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- That one comes along on Aug. 28 . . . 2287.
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- http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/6498928.htm
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