Much ado about Mars ; The night sky and our sense of wonder

My companion and I were alone with the stars: the misty river of the Milky Way flowing across the sky, the patterns of the constellations standing out bright and clear, a blazing planet low on the horizon. … [The people living nearby] probably gave not a thought to the beauty overhead; and because they could see it almost any night, perhaps they never will.

– Rachel Carson, “The Sense of Wonder”

As you probably have heard by now, tomorrow at 5:51 a.m., Mars will be the closest it has been to our planet in all of human history. And even if the sky is cloudy in tomorrow’s predawn hours, good views of the fourth planet from the Sun will be available for several weeks, from just after dusk to just before dawn.

The reason for tomorrow morning’s proximity, a “mere” 34,646,418 miles, is that just when the Earth’s orbit puts it at its farthest distance from the Sun, Mars’ orbit brings it to its closest point to the Sun.

Kevin Conod of the Dreyfuss Planetarium in Newark notes that the best time to see Mars may not be just before dawn tomorrow. He says the planet will appear larger than normal through the first week in October, and that “the best time to view Mars is whenever the weather is best.”

Because Mars is low in the sky in the evening and early morning, when trees and buildings may obstruct your view, some of the best views are around 1 a.m., when the planet is located high in the southern sky.

While Mars’ visit is significant and certainly worth a long look, it should be noted that the planet still appears quite small in the sky, and that it is only a tiny fraction nearer to Earth than it was for a time many decades ago. The best thing about Mars’ relative proximity these days is that it provides a wonderful reason for people to go outside at night and look to the stars.

The night sky, a much-overlooked attraction, is one of the increasingly rare places in this region where you can cast your eyes without seeing advertising or human imprints other than civilization’s light pollution.

At the very least, the seemingly infinite night sky is a dramatic reminder that the universe does not revolve around us, no matter how urgent and important our mortal concerns may seem.

In his astronomy book “The Soul of the Night,” Chet Raymo remembers a night in his early childhood when his father dragged him out of bed to see a comet. The young boy never saw the comet, but he saw so much more.

“We stood in the frosty air and searched the sky until dawn lighted the east,” Mr. Raymo writes. “I carry from that night my first memory of the stars, nameless, uncountable, flung like a cold net across the pines, beautiful and frightening.”

Most of us can’t remember much about our early years, but most of us can probably still remember when our mom or dad took us outside on a clear night and showed us the Milky Way or the man in the Moon.

The next week or so provides a wonderful excuse to recapture that childlike awe, that sense of wonder that Rachel Carson wrote about – a sense of wonder that keeps our minds alive with new thoughts and ideas. The worlds that we can see on a clear night may be millions or billions of miles away, but they can expand profoundly the way we view ourselves and the world around us.

– Jim Wright

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* For more information on Mars, plus links to other excellent astronomy sites, log on to www.newarkmuseum.org/planetarium/mars/- mars.html, or NASA’s Web site, nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov.

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