Mars is
closer to Earth now than any time until the year 2016, offering skywatchers a
great look.
The Hubble
Space Telescope took advantage of the opportunity, too, photographing the red
planet earlier this month. The images were pasted together into a video showing
Mars' full rotation.
The red
planet is now the brightest "star" in the evening sky, easily visible
by mid-evening until dawn. It comes closest to the Earth today at 6:46 p.m.
EST, when it will be 54,783,381 miles (88,165,305 kilometers) from us.
Mars looks
like an orange star to the naked eye, but it's revealed as a disk with many features
in modest telescopes. It will put on a good show
all month.
Although
2003 offered astronomers a view of Mars 20 million miles (32 million
kilometers) closer than this year's approach, Hubble's most recent detailed
look at the red planet shows it's free of dust storms. However, ice crystal clouds
in the northern and southern polar caps can be seen.
Two dark
patches lie just south of the equator in Hubble's view: The large triangular
shape to the right is Syrtis Major while the horizontal lane to the left is
Sinus Meridiani. NASA's Mars Exploration Rover named Opportunity landed in the
western part of this region in January 2004.
As the
Martian winter closes in, Opportunity's dust-laden
companion called Spirit is scouting out a place to survive the poorly lit
winter for about six months.
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