Close encounter
All eyes are on the sky as Mars comes closer than it has since Neanderthals looked up.
By Monique Bhimani
Staff Reporter

For a few hours tonight, the view of Earth’s closest neighbor is going to be the best it’s been since the Stone Age.

It’s been about 60,000 years since the last time Earth and Mars have been this close to each other, said Tom Black, director of the Fort Worth Sidewalk Astronomers.

“What’s significant about this is that Earth will be just under 35 million miles (56 million kilometers) from Mars, the closest distance we can get to Mars,” said Black. “Mars and Earth have done this before, but not in recorded history.”

According to the NASA Web site, tonight the view of Mars will be twice as wide and six times brighter than the view of the planet on June 1. Neanderthals were the last people to have such a magnificent view of Mars, according to the site.

To bring the event to a more modern audience faculty and staff of the physics/astronomy department and the Oscar E. Monnig Meteorite Gallery will host “See and Touch Mars!” from 8 p.m. to midnight today in the courtyard between the Winton-Scott Hall and Sid W. Richardson Building.

The event is free and open to the general public and telescopes and binoculars will be available in the courtyard for a better view of the Red Planet, said Teresa Moss, director of the Monnig Meteorite Gallery.

There will be a PowerPoint presentation on Mars and tours inside the meteorite gallery, Moss said. A movie about Mars will also be showing in the gallery theater, Moss said.
“The purpose of the event is to invite the surrounding community to ‘see and touch’ Mars, providing them an up-close and personal encounter with the Red Planet,” said Moss. “This celestial event will not happen again until 2287, if then.”

In addition to the TCU Mars party, two other organizations will hold free viewing sessions tonight. The Fort Worth Astronomical Society will hold “Mars at its Best” at 8:15 p.m. at the Noble Planetarium, located in the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History. The Fort Worth Sidewalk Astronomers will also have telescopes set up from 9 to 11 p.m. at the Barnes and Noble on 8525 Airport Freeway.

Doug Ingram, an astronomy and physics professor, said the average orbital distance of Mars is about 40 percent further from the Sun than Earth.

Every couple years, Earth passes Mars, which is in the exact opposite direction from the Sun in a setup called “opposition,” Ingram said.

“The orbits of Earth and Mars are ellipses with slightly different orientations, so when opposition occurs, they aren’t always the same distance apart,” said Ingram. “During this upcoming opposition, they are going to be closer to one another than at any time during the last 60,000 years.”

Several students were so excited about the event that they decided to get a sneak preview. Jamie Orban, a junior engineering and math major, went with a half dozen friends Saturday to a friend’s house to get a good view of Mars.

“Mars is so brilliant and beautiful it’s hard to believe that it is so far away and shining so brightly,” said Orban.

Unfortunately, it was cloudy and the view was not as good as they expected, said Dale Smith, a senior criminal justice and friend of Orban.

“It was cool to see, but difficult to keep in view especially on the cloudy night,” said Smith.

Orban said she became interested in star-gazing last December and one of her friends mentioned there would be a good view of Mars in August. This led to the star-gazing party over the weekend, Orban said.

The period of opposition between Earth, Mars and the Sun lasts through mid-October, so there will be plenty of time to get a good look at Mars, said Black.