Our celestial neighbor is closer than ever
For those of us who still cling to the possibility that Martians could attack at any moment, the coming weeks will be revealing.
Look at the southern pre-dawn sky, and the steadily brightening red light is ominous: If an invasion were ever going to happen, Aug. 27 would be the day.
On that date, Mars will be closer to Earth than at any time in recorded history — 34,649,589 miles away, to be exact. If the Martians are energy-conscious, it would make perfect sense.
So, you might think the astronomers who spend much of their time with their heads in space would be freaking out right about now.
Nope. Try decidedly underwhelmed.
Mars will be a significant display, they say, but nothing that will be marked in the annals of history.
In astronomical terms (which, in this case, is not meant to sound overwhelming), Mars won't be a "disc," like the moon, but neither will it be just a "point," like a star.
"It's not maybe so dramatic as some people have made it sound," says Mark Leising, a Clemson University physicist and astronomer. "It is closer than we've been in some tens of thousands of years, perhaps 60,000 years, but only by a little."
The truth is, Earth and Mars meet every 26 months when our planet laps its closest neighbor on the orbital inside track around the sun.
The two worlds meet for their predetermined neighborly wave at "opposition," an astronomical term for when the Sun, Earth and Mars form a straight line. But how intimate they get is different every time, because their orbits are elliptical, not circular.
On other dates throughout history — Aug. 23, 1924; Aug. 18, 1845; and Aug. 13, 1766, to name a few — Mars and Earth came about as close as they will come to each other later this month, about 35 million miles.
The next meeting will be Halloween 2005, when about 43 million miles will separate the two planets. So, in effect, Leising says, "Every 2.2 years is a good time to look at Mars."
The last time Mars came anywhere near this close to our planet, the Neanderthals were scratching their heads at that strange red dot in the sky.
Then, Earth and Mars were about 150,000 miles farther apart than they will be on Aug. 27.
When the two meet again in 2005, Mars will be about 8 million miles farther and about 70 percent dimmer than it will be on Aug. 27.
And not until the year 2287 will Mars be closer than it will be in a few days.
Forgive us unscientific, naive Martian-invader/abduction theorists who learned what we know about Mars from those Bugs Bunny cartoons, but 150,000 miles and 8 million miles sound a long ways away.
As do mention of "Neanderthals" and "the year 2287," let alone Halloween 2005 and the prospect of what crazy new costume some eccentric party crasher will come up with by then.
When we talk about outdoing the Neanderthals, it doesn't seem like any great accomplishment. But this shared event is a tie to a long-gone age, and the next-best living thing we've got is Meatloaf or Neil Young.
Wild ride
For the vivid imagination, the absolute precision of a mathematical formula charting the night sky is so … inconvenient.
Forget Copernicus. No good celestial event, not one, is worth mentioning unless it can be cast in a completely homo-sapien-centered spotlight.
It's times like these that we pay just a little more attention to Martian conspiracy theorists, the Richard Hoaglands of the cyberworld.
In these times when mystery meets possibility, the circular, so-not-elliptical thinkers of our planet become sages of the cosmos, a tradition dating back to the ancients.
Mars is the planet that, when its red hue painted the dark sky, convined the Greeks a horrible, bloody war was on the horizon.
In 1877, Italian astronomer Giovanni Sciaparelli observed what he called "canali," or channels, on the surface of Mars, which was mistranslated into English as "canals."
The Suez Canal in Egypt, then a recently completed modern marvel, was fresh on the minds of everyone, and some concluded that the surely advanced Martians must have played a hand in its construction.
In 1938, the day before Halloween, a radio broadcast based on H.G. Wells' "War Of The Worlds" — performed by Orson Welles in the form of a news bulletin — actually whipped the nation into a Martian-invasion frenzy.
Those were the days, when an incredibly irrational Martian theory was no grounds for commitment to a mental institution.
But, alas, robotic modules have set down on Mars, and the little green men never showed their little green faces.
There were no intricate "canals," though there was a creepy, Sphinx-like face in the dirt, reminiscent of the occasional Virgin Mary sighting in a steamed-up window or a bagel.
Room for beauty
Still, the world of scientific precision has room for beauty and wonder.
Aside from the moon, Mars will be "the most brilliant thing you see in the southern sky," says Doug Gegen, an astronomer at the Roper Mountain Science Center. "Mars is accessible to even small telescopes this year."
In fact, a good pair of binoculars might get you a good glimpse of the planet, and with a decent telescope and favorable viewing conditions, the melting south-polar ice cap will be particularly visible.
From now until Aug. 27, amateur sky-watchers can check each dark morning as Mars gets brighter, and through September as it steadily wanes.
Now, Mars is most visible in the predawn hours. In September, viewing will be possible at a more reasonable hour, beginning around 10 p.m.
"Most people don't get the chance to see something like that, except for maybe watching the phases of the moon," Leising says.
In September, Roper Mountain Science Center will point its 23-inch telescope toward the red planet for the public to see, Gegen says.
The good thing about predictability, sometimes, is its predictability.
"If it's pouring rain that night (Aug. 27), then you're good for another several weeks anyway," Gegen says. "Start looking now and keep looking on through September."
And just because this isn't the only time Mars comes close to Earth, and just because we haven't seen the little green men, doesn't mean the mystery is gone.
Mars, Leising says, is our nearest neighbor, most similar in environment and still our dream of extraterrestrial colonization, a dream NASA considers as "not completely crazy."
And this current Mars approach is not without its possibilities to discover the incredible.
In anticipation of the shortest journey so far in human history, an armada of NASA space probes, which include two ground rovers, are on a mission to Mars.
"From a scientific point of view, this is actually important, because it's easier to get there," Leising says. "You're a little late if you want to leave now, though."
So, if that's the way it is, are the Martians also taking this opportunity to, say, mount a massive, cataclysmic invasion?
"They would have left some months ago," Leising says. "They would be arriving already about … now."
Finally!
Long-unanswered mysteries can be solved: Is Cher really a Martian, debunking the "little green men" myth? Why, in almost every alien abduction, is there the obligatory cavity probe? Can we give you California and call it even?
