Story: Warning! August 27 at 00:30 Lift up your eyes and look up at the night sky. On this night, the planet Mars will pass just 34.65 million miles from the earth. To the naked eye it looks like two of the moon above the ground! The next time Mars will be so close to the Earth as much as in 2287. Share the news with your friends, because no one living on this earth has ever seen! Other Versions On August 27th … Mars will look as large as the full moon." And finally, "NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS AGAIN." Hoax or Fact: Hoax. Analysis: Circulating messages claim that the red planet Mars will come so close to Earth on coming 27th of August that to a naked human eye, it will look like a second Moon in sky. And it is supposedly once in a lifetime chance to view this amazing phenomenon. Not really! These messages actually refer to a similar incident that occurred on 27th August 2003. That day recorded the distance between the red planet Mars and Earth as 55,758,000 kilometers, which was the closest distance between them since 24 September 57,617 BC, when it was about 55,718,000 kilometers. Millions of people watched Mars appear like a big star in sky. In image section below, you can see astronomer Dennis Mammana of California pointing out Mars to onlookers on 26 August 2003. Ever since that occurrence, these messages have been circulating in various versions, almost every year. The distance of Moon from Earth is just about 384,400 kilometers, so Mars can no way look like a second moon in sky. However, on 30 October 2005 again, Mars came closer to Earth at distance of about 25% greater than what it was in 2003 (69 million kilometers). What occurred in 2003 will happen again in the year 2287. The distance between Earth and Mars varies on time basis, as they both travel along elliptical orbits that are not synchronized, because of their different speeds. According to Space, the minimum distance from the Earth to Mars is about 54.6 million kilometers, while the maximum when they are apart can be about 401 million kilometers. So, to conclude, the above claims are hoax, Mars is not coming closest to Earth on 27 August 2013, and no, it cannot look like a second moon in the sky. The picture that comes with the story is most certainly a photoshop creation. References:
Posted on: Tue, 20 Aug 2013 03:58:35 +0000
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