Mars to make closest approach to Earth in 50,000 years

Mars, the Red Planet, will be making its closest approach to Earth in at least 50,000 years this summer. It will dazzle naked-eye stargazers with a reddish light as bright as giant Jupiter and reveal elusive surface details to observers with access to even modest telescopes.

The year 2003 also promises two total eclipses of the moon - the first visible in parts of the United States in more than three years - and an assortment of meteor showers and beautiful conjunctions of moon and planets.

But, barring an unexpected bright comet, Mars may get the most attention from stargazers.

During the summer months this year, the gears of the heavens will bring the planet to within 35 million miles of Earth, the closest approach since men began painting on cave walls.

One amateur astronomer, George Varros of Mount Airy, Maryland, plans to hunt down and photograph polar caps, surface features and hints of Martian weather in the clouds that form around Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the solar system.

"The good thing about Mars is it's usually a long apparition," staying big and bright all summer long this year, he says. "It's pretty cool."

The year's first lunar eclipse will be seen on May 15.

Total eclipses of the moon occur when the moon passes through the circular shadow that the Earth casts into space, and it is fully shaded from direct sunlight.

If skies are clear, observers will watch the sunlit moon slowly engulfed and dimmed by the shadow's darkness.

Totality will last 53 minutes, with the moon's face turned an eerie, coppery colour. The hue is produced by sunlight, filtered, reddened and scattered by the rim of the Earth's atmosphere.
The second eclipse will occur on Saturday evening, November 8.

© Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service