At 11:45pm tonight, Mars and Earth will be the closest they've been since October 2005. This planetary rendezvous is due to the elliptical orbits of both planets around the Sun and the point at which these two ellipses are nearest to each other. It happens once every two years for Mars and Earth and it's tonight!
So wrap yourself up in your warmest winter coat(s) and get your bum outside to check it out. No excuses for even you city dwellers as Mars easily outshines any urban light pollution (except for maybe in Times Square) and is well above the horizon. It can be best seen looking south in the middle of the night, moving westward till dawn. And with its red-orange color and steady glow, it is also larger than any star you're used to seeing in the sky - in fact, it is 1/100th the size of the full moon. That may not sound like much, but I assure you it's enough to grab your attention. For reference the full moon takes up half a degree of the sky and a typical star in the night sky is on average less than 1/1000th of the the full moon. So Mars is over 10 times bigger than the stars you are used to seeing! And to put it all in perspective, as many of you may know from seeing Apollo 13, the size of the full moon is comparable to the width of your thumb at arms length. You could say then that Mars is 1/100th the width of your thumb, but that's besides the point.
It's big, it's bright, it's red, and it's awesome.
(photo credits: NASA and the Hubble Space Telescope)
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