WOW! Mars Spectacular!

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Oh my gosh...
Have I heard this a billion times now or what?!

People keep sending me all this stuff telling me that the planet Mars will be incredibly close to Earth in August... Some say that the red planet will appear to be as big as the moon! Yowza!

Let's be realistic though... big as the moon?! C'mon!

I just want to clear things up here and let everyone know that it's not really true!

Not this year anyway.

Mars did make an pretty close approach to Earth in August of 2003. It came within within 35 million miles, which was its nearest approach in almost 60,000 years. It still, however, did not appear to be "as big as the moon," unless you were using a telescope with a 75-power magnification.

Don't feel TOO dissappointed though... We may not get as close as we did in 2003 (when mars looked 6 times as large and 85 times brighter than it does ordinarily), but we are going to get somewhat close to it again in October! In fact, Mars will outshine most everything in the night sky (except Venus and the Moon).

That's still pretty cool though, dontcha think?! =)

Anyway, I hope that clears up all that crazy stuff about Mars that we've all been getting in our emails and such lately!

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