SMS on Mars spectacle next month is a hoax

Dubai: Pranksters are sending out hoax text messages to residents in the country promising that the planet Mars will be looming large in the sky in a few weeks' time.

The false SMS says that the red planet will be very visible on August 27, adding that it will be as big in the sky as the moon that night.

However, the SMS relates to an event that actually happened on August 27, 2003 and so skywatchers on the lookout for Mars next month will be disappointed.

In August 2003, Mars and Earth came to within 34.65 million miles of each other - which is closer than at any time within the past 50,000 years.

However, nothing similar is scheduled for next month so stargazers will not see anything unusual if they look towards the red planet.

Mike Black, 31, a Briton who received the SMS, said: "It was certainly a bit different from all the annoying advertising e-mails you receive, but it's a shame it's not true.

No reason

"I don't understand what motivates people to start sending messages like this. Maybe most of the people sending the SMS now don't realise it is a fake, but someone must have started this off again for no reason other than to build people's hopes up. It's stupid."

History: A favourite time of the year for fake mails

Similar hoax e-mails have circulated in the past couple of years, each one promising that the red planet, Mars, would appear in the sky in August of those years.

In 2005, an e-mail began circulating with a slide show that said Mars would gradually get bigger in the sky in August 2005.

The following year an almost identical hoax e-mail was circulating in the UAE, this time relating to August 2006.