1/30/2016 Superbright Mars Arrives This Spring

Superbright Mars Arrives This Spring

By Joe Rao, SPACE.com Skywatching Columnist | January 29, 2016 12:59pm ET

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Mars will be at opposition soon, meaning the Red Planet and the sun will be on opposite sides of Earth, giving
the best possible views of the Martian surface. This artist's concept imagines Mars at opposition in December
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This spring, Mars will appear the biggest and brightest it's been in over a decade, and here are
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SKYWATCHING
the best times to see it. 

It is not often that Earthlings

ENTERTAINMENT  get a good look at Mars. To begin with, it's a small planet, and it
spends most of its time far away. Usually skywatchers see it as just a tiny, fuzzy, orange blob in
the eyepiece. The only time they get a good look at its surface markings, clouds, dust storms and
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changing polar caps is around the time of its oppositions — when Mars appears diametrically
opposite to the sun in the sky — which happen at intervals of a bit more than two years. And not
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all Mars oppositions are created equal: The best ones come in bunches of two or three, which
repeat in a cycle that averages 15 to 17 years long.
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is going to be a special spring for Mars. The Red Planet is going to appear bigger and
brighter in May than it has in nearly 13 years. At its best, in late May, the planet will appear
nearly twice as bright and more than 18 percent wider than at its previous good opposition, in
April 2014. In fact, from late April until mid­July, Mars will be closer to the Earth than at any time
since 2003; from April 25 to July 10 this year, the planet will remain larger in apparent size than it
ever got at its last opposition, two years ago. [Skywatching Mars: 2016 Is a Great Time! (Video)]

Due to its distinctly noncircular orbit, Mars will not be closest to the Earth until more than a week
later, on May 30. That day, the tiger­hued world comes to within 46.8 million miles (75.3 million
kilometers) of Earth, 10.6 million miles (17.1 million km) nearer than in 2014. This is also less
than five months before Mars comes to perihelion — its closest point to the sun — on Oct. 29.
Thus, the 2016 apparition can be termed favorable or perihelic.

On July 4, just over a month after Mars' closest approach this year, the planet will be at one of its
own equinoxes. So when Mars appears at its largest and brightest, skywatchers get to see nearly
all of the Red Planet from pole to pole. Mars' southern hemisphere is coming out of winter, so a
prominent ice cap should be visible.

Low but fuzzy

The only problem for telescope owners in midnorthern countries will be the Red Planet's low
position in the sky. Frustratingly enough, whenever Mars has an especially close opposition, it is
in the southern part of the zodiac. For latitude 40 degrees north, Mars will climb no higher than
28 degrees above the southern horizon in the middle of the night. If you remember that the width
of your clenched fist is equal to roughly 10 degrees, you'll see that when Mars is at its very best,
the planet will appear less than three fists above the horizon. Therefore, observers at
midnorthern latitudes will find the planet relatively low above the horizon, where the atmospheric
conditions for viewing tend to be poor. This seriously limits the amount of detail visible
telescopically, except perhaps on the steadiest of spring nights. The farther south you live the
better, when it comes to viewing the Red Planet: Observers in the Southern Hemisphere are
ideally placed, with Mars crossing high overhead. [Mars from Orbit: Photos from NASA's Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter]

The current view

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This week, Mars comes up above the eastern horizon just before midnight. A few hours later, the
planet will catch your eye low in the southeast sky, appearing as a yellow­orange star, shining at
a respectable magnitude of +0.9 not far from the 3rd­magnitude star Zubenelgenubi in Libra, the
Scales. But by May 22, the day Mars reaches opposition, the planet rises near sunset for
midnorthern observers. Mars then attains a magnitude of ­2.1, and with its pumpkin­hued
radiance, it will be a truly imposing sight. It will glow 8 degrees west of the so­called "rival of
Mars," Antares, just ahead of the three stars marking the claws of Scorpius.

Red Planet reverses course

Mars is steadily moving eastward against the background stars, but that course will soon appear
to slow, almost seeming to waver, as if it had become uncertain. Finally, on April 17, the planet
will pause and come to a halt. Then, for the next two months, it will reverse its course in the
heavens and move backward against the star background, toward the west, almost as if it had
lost something. Then, on June 29, the planet will pause again, before resuming its normal
eastward direction.

All the planets exhibit this "retrograde motion" at one time or another. But for the longest time,
the ancient astronomers were unable to come up with a satisfactory explanation for it. For one
thing, while behaving in this strange manner, Mars will also appear to deviate somewhat from its
normal course; the retrograde motion will appear to bring it a little below its regular orbital track.
In other words, for those watching from Earth, Mars will appear to travel in a loop. The Greeks
held that the sun, moon and planets moved in perfect circles around the Earth, so the loop
presented a particularly difficult phenomenon to explain.

Ultimately, their solution required the planets to move around the Earth in smaller "epicycles," a
small circle whose center moves along its main orbital circle around Earth. This led to complex,
coil­like curves that didn't quite match the actual observations of the planets. In actuality, the
apparent backtracking occurs because the Earth and Mars are both orbiting the sun.

As the time of Mars' closest approach gets nearer, we'll have more to say about it. So stay tuned.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes
about astronomy for Natural History magazine, the Farmer's Almanac and other publications, and
he is an on­camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, N.Y. Follow
us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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