Mars as big as the moon this year????

"NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS AGAIN"

And they wont see it in August either!!!!!!

Johnmc.

pure science fiction, if it was that big, we'd be in serious trouble,
real Flash Gordon stuff there. :lol:

FTR Mars is at opposition at the end of October

November 12th... FTR!

Also clearly whoever wrote this knows very little about astronomy and/or telescopes.

and will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide. At a modest 75-power magnification

An object in the sky subtends a specific angle no matter what magnification is used to view it!

I could go on but lets leave it there:)

They get carried away with hyperbole every time mars comes closer than it would in a million years (or 2 years... or whatever.) But I think they're getting at something like this:

When you observe a 25.11 arc second object at 75X, it occupies as much space on our retina as an 1883.25 arc second (31.3875 arc minute) object would to the naked eye. Since the moon is ~ 30 arc minutes, when looking at mars with a 75x eyepiece it appears the same size as the moon without a telescope.

Whew! Can I come out of my storm celler now?

November 12th... FTR!

Actually I meant to say Mars is closest to us at the end of October
Specifically on
October 30. 09:37UT mars is .46412804AU from Dublin! and has an angular size of 20.2 arcseconds

However the correct opposition date is Nov 7th, not Nov 12th. I've seen the 12th around the net in a couple of places but this is incorrect.

NASA GFSC Data shows the following solar elongations for Mars 2 days apart;

NOV 6 178.1W
NOV 8 179.0E
NOV 10 176.4E

Now opposition is defined as the instant the "apparent geocentric solar elongation is closest to 180degrees". From Nasa data above this clearly occurs between 0H UT on Nov 6 and 0UT on Nov 8. My own calculations (based on the IAU recognised vsop87 formula) shows that maximum solar elongation occurs at

11:17UT 07 Nov. SE = 179.507deg.

Oops! :lol: