I received an e-mail yesterday, and I thought I might want to share it. Some of you might have received it too.

The e-mail is as follows:

*Two moons on 27 August*
*27th Aug the Whole World is waiting for...*
Planet Mars will be the brightest in the night sky starting August.
It will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. This will cultivate on Aug. 27 when Mars comes within 34.65M miles of earth. Be sure to watch the sky on Aug. 27 12:30 am. It will look like the earth has 2 moons.
The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287.
Share this with your friends as NO ONE ALIVE TODAY will ever see it again.


Well, I am sure this is rather intriguing.
But let's clarify some things.

Mars was indeed closest to Earth on the 27th of August, as close as only 55,758,006 kilometers(34.65M miles) away from the Earth.
But that happened on the 27th of August in 2003, so people, if you missed it already, its over. As a matter of fact, this e-mail hoax has been passed around since 2003 and it appears every year around this time.

It is also true that Mars might not come as close as this till 2287, when we will experience another close encounter, but Mars actually come close to the Earth every 2 years, just not as close as it was in 2003.

But guess what? Mars never came close enough to be comparable to the moon when seen with the naked eye. Considering that the Moon is only 384,403 kilometres away, while Mars is 56 million kilometres away, and that Mars is only approximately 7.5 times the size of the Moon, you wouldn't really be expecting Mars to be the size of the full moon to the naked eye. In fact, Mars merely appeared twice as wide and 6 times brighter on the 27th of August in 2003. To keen observers, it appeared as a bright red star on a telescope.

Another interesting note would be that, if Mars ever appeared the size of the Moon to the naked eye, we would have things to worry about. That's because Mars would be so close that the gravitational pull of Mars will affect the tidal patterns of Earth so much that we will probably all be drowned, instead of watching the 'two moons' in the sky.

So if you got your alarms clock set to wake up at 12:30am on the 27th of August, forget it. Mars isn't coming.



P.S. If you really want to know, Mars next close approach this year is on the 18th of December, at a distance of 88.42 million kilometers, still considerably far compared to the 55.76 million kilometers recorded in 2003. The next closest approach is calculated to occur in 2018, at a distance of approximately 69.4 million kilometers. But of course, if you can wait till the year 2287, Mars will make another record close enough to match the one in 2003.

Labels: special articles