Mars is coming, and if you have a telescope, make the most of this opportunity in the coming months. It will be a long time before you get another chance like this.
And this fact is absolutely true: Mars, the only planet whose surface we can see in detail from Earth, is now moving towards the best observing position that it will offer us by the year 2031 telescopes.
If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s worth looking for this week, even if you have to wait until after midnight to get a good look.
Related: Night Sky, September 2022: What You Can See Tonight [maps]
Mars is currently midway between the horns of the zodiacal sign of Taurus, the Taurus, rising at approximately 10:30pm local daylight time this week. It is certainly not to be confused once it appears above the east-northeast horizon. Mars, currently glowing like a brilliant, pumpkin-colored light with a magnitude of -0.4, currently ranks third among the 21 brightest stars, after Sirius and Canopus. (The lower the magnitude of an object, the brighter it appears in the sky.)
But as it moves closer to Earth over the coming weeks and months, Mars will continue to get brighter: it will surpass Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, by November 11, and then rank as the fourth-brightest object in the night sky behind the moon, Venus and Jupiter.
Late Friday night (September 16) through Saturday morning (September 17), Mars is hovering about 3.5 degrees to the right and slightly below a waning crescent moon as it rises above the east-northeast horizon (your clenched fist is held at arm’s length about 10 degrees wide). In fact, as you’ll see for yourself, the Red Planet appears more of a yellow-orange hue — the same color as an arid desert under a high sun.
How close?
It’s not often that we get a close look at Mars. First off, it’s a small world, only twice the size of our moon and about half the size of our earth. And more often than not, it spends most of its time far away on the other side of its orbit from us. I know from my many years of public relations experience that when I’m outside looking at the sky through my telescope when the moon is nowhere to be seen, the object most people want to see is Mars.
And yet, ironically, Mars is one of them highly disappointing telescopic objects that usually only appear as tiny, featureless blobs of orange. The only time we have a legitimate chance of spotting the markings on its surface, polar ice caps, clouds, and possible dust storms is about every 26 months when Earth is approaching Mars, when our smaller, faster orbit “overtakes”. “Mars around the sun.
We call these oppositions because Mars is diametrically opposite the Sun in the sky; when the sun goes down, mars rises. It reaches its highest point in the sky in the middle of the night and sets just as the sun is rising. Mars oppositions occur just over two years apart, but not all are equal. Since both Mars and Earth’s orbits are slightly elliptical, some close approaches between the two planets are noticeably closer than others. The very best come in bundles of two or three, repeating in a cycle averaging 15 to 17 years.
We are currently in the downturn of this cycle. In July 2018, Mars came within an exceptional 35.78 million miles (57.58 million km) of Earth, and in October 2020 it made another unusually close approach of 38.57 million miles (62.06 million km). approximation. On this upcoming occasion, Mars will make its closest approach to Earth on the evening of November 30 (around 9:17 p.m. Eastern Standard Time). The planet will then be 50.61 million miles (81.43 million km) from Earth, measured center to center. Mars will be in opposition to the Sun eight days later, on December 8th.
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When it comes closest to Earth on November 30, the apparent disc diameter of Mars will be 17.2 arc seconds. To get an idea of just how big that is, wait until after 8pm this week and if you have a telescope, look at silvery-white Jupiter glowing low in the eastern sky; it appears nearly 50 arc seconds across.
In contrast, Mars’ disk will appear only about a third the size of Jupiter’s when the red planet comes closest to Earth later this year. While this may sound small, keep in mind that this is still uncharacteristically large for Mars. In fact, from November 21st to December 10th to May 2031, the apparent size of Mars will be larger than ever before.
The best telescope for planetary work is a large, high-quality refractor telescope or large reflecting telescope with a long focal length. With almost every good telescope, however, interesting and fruitful observations can still be made. In any case, the limiting factor is usually atmospheric stability, which can change from hour to hour, dramatically affecting image quality.
For both casual and serious observers, Mars offers challenges and – with a bit of luck – joys. In a good quality 4 or 6 inch (10 or 15 centimeter) telescope you may be able to catch a glimpse of the north polar cap, murky surface features, cloud and dust events on a night of excellent, stable air. If you use an eyepiece with a magnification of 105x, the Martian disk appears at the same angular size as the moon to the naked eye.
A marker may only appear fleetingly when you first see it. But over the next few nights, as you become more familiar with its appearance, you’ll be able to spot it right away — and perhaps see details you couldn’t see at first. Remember:
The more you look, the more you will see.
Size isn’t everything
As we noted at the outset, Mars is already shining brightly in our night sky, inviting observers to see what they can see. Catch the planet high up in the east-southeast sky at midnight on November 7th. After the December 8 opposition, it will be an early evening object in the months thereafter as it moves into the distance.
Almost as if to make up for its relatively small apparent size, Mars will literally rise in the night sky. In fact, this year’s observing season sees Mars near the northernmost part of the ecliptic, in Taurus above Orion. This means it flies very high overhead for observers at mid-northern latitudes each night – well above the thick layers of air and poor atmospheric visibility that worried northern observers during its extraordinarily close flyby in the summer of 2018.
December 7th: M&M night
Finally… make sure to put a big circle on your calendar for Wednesday, December 7th. During the evening hours, the Full Moon will pass extraordinarily close over Mars, actually hiding it for parts of North America (called the occultation) and no doubt prompting a question repeated many times this night: “What is that bright yellow-orange star directly below that Moon?” Tonight, even the most casual of people will turn their attention to Mars.
Have fun observing Mars!
Joe Rao serves as an instructor and visiting professor at New York University Hayden Planetarium (opens in new tab). He writes on astronomy for Journal of Natural History (opens in new tab)the Peasant Almanac (opens in new tab) and other publications. Follow us on Twitter @spacedotcom (opens in new tab) and further Facebook (opens in new tab)
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