Look low above the east-southeast horizon at around 9:30 p.m. on Mar. 18 (your local time). Weather permitting, you should see the waning gibbous moon accompanied by a very bright planet Mars on the upper left, with the bright blue star Spica to the upper right. Mars will be 64 million miles (103 million kilometers) from Earth. The Red Planet will rise like a brand of fire in the east-southeast about two hours after sunset. It is currently rising about five minutes earlier each night. This golden-orange world has now flamed up to magnitude -1, the third brightest object in the pre-midnight evening sky, rivaled only by Jupiter and Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. It will continue to brighten dramatically through the balance of this month. In contrast, Spica shines only one-sixth as bright. Mars will continue to slowly approach the Earth as it moves in its orbit over the next four weeks, the planet’s apparent size will continue to slowly grow through the planet’s closest encounter to us in mid-April. The planet is getting closer to Earth by about 244,000 miles (393,000 km) each day. After many months of direct (eastward) travel, Mars slowed to a crawl against the stars of Virgo in late February before beginning retrograde (westward) motion on March 1. It will pass 5 degrees north of Spica at the end of this month (your closed fist held out at arms length covers 10 degrees of the night sky). Mars will not resume its normal eastward motion until May 21.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 12:41:11 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015