View Mars live! Tonight (April 8th), beginning at 23:00 Universal Time , Gianluca Masi is providing a webcast to show Mars telescopically.
Visit his Virtual Telescope Project for details.
This month we’re closer to Mars than Earth has come for almost 6½ years. The Red Planet appears brighter and bigger in the evening sky than it has since December 2007.
In the middle two weeks of April, Mars will shine at a brightness of magnitude –1.5 (matching Sirius’s bright luster), and in a telescope it will appear 15.1 arcseconds across. That’s still pretty tiny, but it’s larger than Mars has been at its past few oppositions, (The planet will peak out with an apparent width of 24.3 arcseconds in July 2018. Mark your calendars, astronomers!)
More at Sky & Telescope
If you want to observe from the comfort of your own home, there is an online observing session hosted by The Virtual Telescope Project 2.0.The Night of the Red Planet will be hosted on April 8th, 2014 at 11:00 p.m. UT.
Visit his Virtual Telescope Project for details.
This month we’re closer to Mars than Earth has come for almost 6½ years. The Red Planet appears brighter and bigger in the evening sky than it has since December 2007.
In the middle two weeks of April, Mars will shine at a brightness of magnitude –1.5 (matching Sirius’s bright luster), and in a telescope it will appear 15.1 arcseconds across. That’s still pretty tiny, but it’s larger than Mars has been at its past few oppositions, (The planet will peak out with an apparent width of 24.3 arcseconds in July 2018. Mark your calendars, astronomers!)
More at Sky & Telescope
If you want to observe from the comfort of your own home, there is an online observing session hosted by The Virtual Telescope Project 2.0.The Night of the Red Planet will be hosted on April 8th, 2014 at 11:00 p.m. UT.
