Sunday, August 24, 2008

Sorry ,not 2 moons! Okay I got caught on this one!

Ieven checked in with 'Space Weather' as to add their goodies, and saidto myself hummmm they are slow in putting out this info about the twomoons Yep, Tillie and I found out we were caught off guard! Ouch and I even checked before I entered it is what gets me......... LOL

Sowas everyone in the link of pass the information caught off guard! Doyou know how many places we sent this? LOL I just deleted and said nota word ........ LOL Am waiting for ..... Hey!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Well, Indigoput it on her calendar ....oh no!

MMs.gif


Origins: Some things never go out of style, and this "Mars

This is an image of Mars. (Courtesy of NASA/JPL)
(236K GIF)


Spectacular" message may be one of them. It's yet another example of awidely-circulated e-mail containing information that was once true butwhich continues to be forwarded around year after year, long after theinformation it contains has become outdated. Does not give the Year as it is past around.

Mars did make an extraordinarily close approach to Earthseveral years ago, culminating on 27 August 2003, whenthe red planet came within 35 million miles (or 56million kilometers) of Earth, its nearest approach to us inalmost 60,000 years. At that time, Mars appeared approximately 6times larger and 85 timesbrighter in the sky than it ordinarily does. (The message quoted abovewas often reproduced with an unfortunate line break in the middle ofthe third sentence of the second paragraph, leaving some readers withthe mistaken impression that Mars would "look as large as the full moonto the naked eye" and not realizing that the statement only applied tothose viewing Mars through a telescope with 75-powermagnification.)

Although Mars' proximity to Earth in August 2003(referred to as a perihelic opposition) was a rare occurrence,the red planet comes almost as near to us every 15 to 17 years.To the unaided observer, Mars' appearance in August 2003wasn't significantly larger or brighter than it is during those muchmore common intervals of closeness.

Mars had another close encounterwith Earth in in 2005, but that occurrence took place in October (notAugust), and the red planet appeared about 20% smaller than it didduring similar circumstances in 2003.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

LOL Thanks for the heads up. It's scratched off the calendar now. (Hugs)Indigo