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Nows Best Time to View Mars *** Planet Wont Be This Close Till 2018

Posted on: Friday, 23 December 2005, 00:00 CST

By EMILY KERN

Nows best time to view Mars *** Planet wont be this close till 2018

Now is the time to get a good look at Mars, because the red planet wont be as close until the summer of 2018.

While Earth orbits the sun in 365 days, Mars orbit takes 687 days, LSU astronomy professor Brad Schaefer said.

And while Earth has a round orbit and stays the same distance from the sun at all times, Mars has an elliptical orbit and is at certain times closer to Earth and the sun than at other times.

This month is the nearest Mars has come to Earth since August 2003.

At that time, it passed 34.7 million miles from Earth.

Now, Mars is passing approximately 43.1 million miles from Earth, and will continue to move away until the two planets meet up again in 2018.

Mars will appear smaller through a telescope than it did in August 2003, said Craig Brenden, educational curator at BRECs Highland Road Park Observatory, but the view is still better than it will be for quite a while.

Its not a big planet to start with, Brenden said. That also makes it much harder to observe. Thats why its good to observe it when its close.

Mars appears in the eastern sky, while Venus appears in the west.

Its really bright. The only thing brighter is Venus, Brenden said.

Trey Goodman, manager of the Highland Road Park Observatory, has some advice for people trying to view the planet from a home telescope.

He suggests giving your eyes time to adjust to looking through a telescope.

Some people look quickly and give up, he said.

A green, red or orange filter will work well to see detail, Goodman said.

He also suggests viewing when the atmosphere is calm.

The less the stars twinkle at night, the better the seeing, Goodman said.

The planet will appear as a disk, smaller than the size of a pearl, he said. Its not going to fill the eyepiece.

Brenden said any telescope that gives a nice, clean view of the moon at 200x, or magnified 200 times, will also provide a good view of Mars.

But, he cautions, the average home telescope is not going to provide the same quality viewing as taken by a Mars orbiter.

In 2003, the East Baton Rouge Parish Recreation and Parks Commission observatory conducted several viewings of Mars that attracted hundreds of people.

Unfortunately, many of them left disappointed with the experience because the view didnt compare with photographs released by NASA.

In viewings of Mars at the recently re-opened LSU Observatory, Schaefer said he was able to see Hellas, a huge impact crater larger than the size of the continental United States and faint clouds along the western edge that he said are morning mists.

The polar ice caps are fairly small during this time of the Martian year, and Schaefer said he could barely see the southern cap.

Schaefer said he suspects the massive volcano Olympus Mons will be visible by its whitish mountain-top cloud. The volcano is the size of Arizona and three times the height of Mount Everest.

The Highland Road Park Observatory is open for viewing from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

The LSU Observatory held its grand re-opening Saturday after being closed for more than a decade before repairs began about a year ago.

It now has been completely refurbished and contains an 11.5-inch Clark refractor telescope built in 1939 by Alvan Clark, the worlds best maker of refractor telescopes. Schaefer said.

The next public viewing night at the LSU Observatory is from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 10.

Source: Advocate; Baton Rouge, La.

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