This Is Worse Than Orson Welles
The Mars Hoax is beginning to make the rounds again. It just won’t go away. I’m sure you’ve heard it. Mars is about to be the closest it will ever be (or some such claim) and it can be gonna be as large as being the full Moon on August 27th! I’ve even heard all this was planning to take location at 12:30 am so get your cameras ready” and they were about to be close together, oh what an event.
Here’s the actual deal. No-No-No-No!! Just go ahead and Google to the Mars Hoax or use any other search engine you please.
Let me take a crack at it as well:
Let’s do away with the last bit very first. Mars will not be above the horizon at 12:30 am on August 27th. Pretty hard to have that fantastic photo if the planet can™t even be noticed eh?
The part about Mars being closest in who knows how prolonged. The picture above (click to enlarge) shows the relative positions with the inner planets on August 27, 2010. Note the orbital tracks within the picture. The Earth and Mars are a long techniques apart on that special day; actually the next time we are going to be anywhere close to Mars will likely be in April of 2014 and we will still be 92,750,760 km or 57,632,650 miles apart!
Lets compare August 27, 2010 data:
Moon Mars
Diameter: 3,476 km
2,160 miles
6,792 km
4,220 miles
Angular size: 29′ 15″ 4.39â
Distance to:
(from Earth)
408,530 km
253,360 miles
320,000,000 km
198,838,782 miles
Magnitude: 0.00 1.Ȕ
Now I know some of you are heading “but Tom, your numbers aren’t exact”, yeah I know but they are quite close.
You are able to see by not only the picture, but searching at that little chart, the angular dimension (the apparent sizing with the pair), it is not even close! The magnitude shows Mars will be dimmer as witnessed by us – the Moon is about to be 90 odd percent full too. Tiny and comparatively dim isn’t large and bright.
Could we on Earth actually see Mars as huge because the entire Moon? No, but precisely would it take?
We would need to move Mars significantly closer to us. In order for Mars to appear to be the very same dimension because the Moon we would require to move the orbit in – a great deal! From 320,000,000 km to ᗡ,000 km, (that’s from 198,838,782 miles to 497,6Ȧ miles for your metrically challenged). Can you imagine what that would do to our tides, to say nothing about other items like rotational and orbital rate?
The other choice could be to move the poor old Moon so its angular sizing was 4.39″ to match Mars. Moving the Moon from 408,530 km (253,360 miles) to a whooping 163,320,000 km (101,490,000 miles) away would do it. I pretty much believe that could be worse to the Earth than moving Mars closer. I can envision the poor Earth spinning like a raw egg, ahhh, eggs and astronomy, no balancing necessary.
So hopefully this will dispel any notion Mars as well as the Moon will ever appear to become the similar dimension to any individual in their suitable mind as viewed from Earth.
