The sky of Egypt and the Arab world is monitored today, Friday, October 14, 2022, a few hours before midnight, and for the rest of the night, the conjunction of the waning humpback moon with the planet Mars, where they will be separated by regarding 3 degrees in a phenomenon that you will see with the naked eye.
And the Jeddah Astronomical Society revealed in a report, that Moon and Mars They will initially observe towards the northeast horizon, and since the apparent distance between the Moon and Mars is wide, they will not appear together in the telescope’s field of view, but this can be done through binoculars.
Observing the brightness of Mars every week is very important to see how it will change dramatically between now and the day of the meeting next December. These dramatic changes in the brightness of Mars (and its red color) are the reason why the ancients called this planet the god of war, sometimes the god of war rested and sometimes Getting violent, these changes are part of the reason why Mars is so amazing to see in the night sky.
To understand why Mars’ brightness varies so much in Earth’s sky, we must realize that Mars is not a very large planet with a diameter of only 6,790 kilometers, making it just over half the size of Earth (12,750 kilometers in diameter).
Keep in mind that Mars, unlike Jupiter, is the largest planet in our solar system. Jupiter has a diameter of 140,000 km, more than 20 planets the size of Mars can be aligned side by side in front of Jupiter, so Jupiter always looks bright, because it is very large, but this is not the case for small Mars, whose brightness is related to its proximity or distance from Earth .
Mars revolves around the sun outside Earth’s orbit and the distance between Earth and Mars changes. Sometimes Earth and Mars are on the same side of the solar system and close to each other, and sometimes, as was the case for most of 2021, Mars and Earth were on roughly opposite sides of the Earth. the sun from each other, and thus Mars appeared faint.
The reason the red planet is sometimes bright is because it takes the Earth a year to orbit the sun once, and it takes Mars regarding two years to orbit once.
So the brightness of Mars wanes and increases in the sky regarding every two years, but this is not the only cycle of Mars that affects its brightness, there is also a 15-year cycle of bright and faint encounters.
Encounter 2018 was a very special year for Mars because of that 15-year cycle, when the planet was much brighter than it’s been since 2003, which astronomers call perihelion Mars, in other words, in 2018, the globe passed between Mars and the Sun. – Which made Mars meet in the sky – At regarding the same time Mars was as close as possible to the Sun.
So, in the years that we pass between Mars and the Sun, and Mars is also closer to the Sun, Earth and Mars are also closer.
The previous perihelion of Mars was in 2003, and the red planet was at a distance of 55.7 million kilometers from Earth, which is closer than it has ever been in nearly 60,000 years, and at the rendezvous of 2020, it was still very bright but not as bright as it was In 2018 or 2003.
The date of the next Mars meeting, when the planet will appear at its peak in two years in the sky, will be in the second half of this year 2022.
