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skyoverhead favorited a video
(6 hours ago)
CFHT CLOUD CAM TIME LAPSE FEBRUARY 29-MARCH 1, 2012
MARS AT OPPOSITION: Mars is approaching opposition. On March 3-5, the Red Planet will be up all ...
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CFHT CLOUD CAM TIME LAPSE FEBRUARY 29-MARCH 1, 2012
MARS AT OPPOSITION: Mars is approaching opposition. On March 3-5, the Red Planet will be up all night long, opposite the sun and as close to Earth as it will get in 2012. Mars shines overhead at midnight 6 times brighter than a 1st magnitude star and looks great through a backyard telescope
Mars is at opposition on Saturday, when it lines up opposite the Sun in our sky. For several nights around opposition, it rises at sunset, climbs high across the sky during the night, and sets at sunrise. It is brightest for the year, too.
Earth and Mars, like all the other planets in the solar system, orbit the sun in elliptical orbits. Because our planet is closer to the sun than Mars, it races along its orbit more quickly. Earth makes two trips around the sun in about the same amount of time it takes Mars to make one trip. Earth has been racing toward Mars for months, gaining on the Red Planet by more than 200,000 miles each day. We will finally catch up to Mars and pass relatively close to it this weekend.
From our perspective on our spinning world, whenever Earth is between the sun and a planet, the planet will rise in the east just as the sun sets in the west. Then, after staying up in the sky the entire night, the planet will set in the west just as the sun rises in the east. Because the planet and the sun appear on opposite sides of the sky, we say that the planet is in "opposition."
Mars is named after the ancient Roman god of war, as befitting the red planet's bloody color. The Romans copied the ancient Greeks, who named the fourth planet from the sun after their god of war, Ares. Other civilizations also typically gave the planet names based on its color — for example, the Egyptians named it "Her Desher," meaning "the red one," while ancient Chinese astronomers dubbed it "the fire star."
Orbit & Rotation
Average Distance from the Sun
English: 141,633,260 miles
Metric: 227,936,640 km
By Comparison: 1.524 times that of Earth
Perihelion (closest)
English: 128,400,000 miles
Metric: 206,600,000 km
By Comparison: 1.404 times that of Earth
Aphelion (farthest)
English: 154,900,000 miles
Metric: 249,200,000 km
By Comparison: 1.638 times that of Earth
A small asteroid about the size of a house made one cosmic leap past Earth Wednesday, just in time for leap day.
The newfound asteroid 2012 DS32 posed no chance of hitting our planet but made an evening pass to mark this special day for Earth, NASA scientists said.
"Happy Leap Day! Small asteroid 2012 DS32 will safely pass Earth at 7:36 p.m. EST," astronomers with NASA's Asteroid Watch program wrote in a Twitter post. The Asteroid Watch program is part of the Near Earth Object office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The asteroid 2012 DS32 is about 61 feet (about 18.5 meters) across. At the nearest point, the asteroid zoomed within about 446,000 miles (717,767 kilometers) of the planet, which is slightly less than twice the distance between Earth and the moon. The average Earth-moon distance is about 238,000 miles (382,900 kilometers).
Msnbc.com, stardate.org, spaceref.com, spaceweather.com,
Audio: Josh Kelley - Opposite of Me
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skyoverhead liked a video
(6 hours ago)
CFHT CLOUD CAM TIME LAPSE FEBRUARY 29-MARCH 1, 2012
MARS AT OPPOSITION: Mars is approaching opposition. On March 3-5, the Red Planet will be up all ...
more
CFHT CLOUD CAM TIME LAPSE FEBRUARY 29-MARCH 1, 2012
MARS AT OPPOSITION: Mars is approaching opposition. On March 3-5, the Red Planet will be up all night long, opposite the sun and as close to Earth as it will get in 2012. Mars shines overhead at midnight 6 times brighter than a 1st magnitude star and looks great through a backyard telescope
Mars is at opposition on Saturday, when it lines up opposite the Sun in our sky. For several nights around opposition, it rises at sunset, climbs high across the sky during the night, and sets at sunrise. It is brightest for the year, too.
Earth and Mars, like all the other planets in the solar system, orbit the sun in elliptical orbits. Because our planet is closer to the sun than Mars, it races along its orbit more quickly. Earth makes two trips around the sun in about the same amount of time it takes Mars to make one trip. Earth has been racing toward Mars for months, gaining on the Red Planet by more than 200,000 miles each day. We will finally catch up to Mars and pass relatively close to it this weekend.
From our perspective on our spinning world, whenever Earth is between the sun and a planet, the planet will rise in the east just as the sun sets in the west. Then, after staying up in the sky the entire night, the planet will set in the west just as the sun rises in the east. Because the planet and the sun appear on opposite sides of the sky, we say that the planet is in "opposition."
Mars is named after the ancient Roman god of war, as befitting the red planet's bloody color. The Romans copied the ancient Greeks, who named the fourth planet from the sun after their god of war, Ares. Other civilizations also typically gave the planet names based on its color — for example, the Egyptians named it "Her Desher," meaning "the red one," while ancient Chinese astronomers dubbed it "the fire star."
Orbit & Rotation
Average Distance from the Sun
English: 141,633,260 miles
Metric: 227,936,640 km
By Comparison: 1.524 times that of Earth
Perihelion (closest)
English: 128,400,000 miles
Metric: 206,600,000 km
By Comparison: 1.404 times that of Earth
Aphelion (farthest)
English: 154,900,000 miles
Metric: 249,200,000 km
By Comparison: 1.638 times that of Earth
A small asteroid about the size of a house made one cosmic leap past Earth Wednesday, just in time for leap day.
The newfound asteroid 2012 DS32 posed no chance of hitting our planet but made an evening pass to mark this special day for Earth, NASA scientists said.
"Happy Leap Day! Small asteroid 2012 DS32 will safely pass Earth at 7:36 p.m. EST," astronomers with NASA's Asteroid Watch program wrote in a Twitter post. The Asteroid Watch program is part of the Near Earth Object office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The asteroid 2012 DS32 is about 61 feet (about 18.5 meters) across. At the nearest point, the asteroid zoomed within about 446,000 miles (717,767 kilometers) of the planet, which is slightly less than twice the distance between Earth and the moon. The average Earth-moon distance is about 238,000 miles (382,900 kilometers).
Msnbc.com, stardate.org, spaceref.com, spaceweather.com,
Audio: Josh Kelley - Opposite of Me
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skyoverhead favorited a video
(6 hours ago)
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Wishing you a successful Cosmic career and life.