Mars Over Manhattan

I just saw the most ridiculous image on a social media site, claiming that there will be two moons visible in our sky on 27 August. The image while cool looking, is just wrong. The claim is that one will be Mars and the other will be our Moon—What?! I’m flabbergasted! TBQF, you would have to have absolutely no common sense to believe that. Oh, in case you don’t remember, TBQF is to be quite frank, catch up! So, let us think about this for second Mars in the night sky looks like a distant light-bulb, it is quite bright considering it is fairly close and illuminated by direct sunlight. When night falls around 7 or 8, and say you’re in the Northern Hemisphere go ahead and look towards the South at the sky, find the bright point of light and that’s Mars. Now, go ahead and give it a thumbs up and cover it. That’s right, it’s still small enough in our sky to disappear behind your thumb. Yet, these crazy people are telling me that Mars is going to travel in its orbit so close to Earth, going from just a small dot to the appearance that it is the size of our moon, in a matter of a few days.

FUN FACT:  Mars completes a full orbit in 687 Earth-days, meaning its moving relatively slow compared to Earth.

ANALYTICAL THOUGHT:  How is Mars going to speed up so quickly in its orbit; that it comes that close to Earth.

FUN FACT:  Mars has a radius of 2,106 miles.

ANALYTICAL THOUGHT:  If Mars is that large and looks like a small dot now, it would have to travel far from its apparent position to a position in which it appears to be the size of our moon.

What about gravity? Let us say Mars somehow shrinks its orbit down to where its closest approach to Earth is so, that it appears as big as our moon in the sky. Mars’ closest approach to Earth as it is in reality is about 35.8 million miles, the Moons distance to Earth is 238,900 miles. Mars is about 150 times further from us than the Moon. Now granted Mars is also about double the size of the Moon—even a little larger. How close would Mars have to be to appear as though it’s the same size as the Moon? Mars would have to be about 478,000 miles away from Earth. That is a significant difference compared to 35,800,000 miles–I put all the zero’s in for dramatic effect. If something pulls Mars in that far, we have a serious gravitational force increase on our hands, and the likely culprit would be the Sun, so why would the Sun effect only the fourth planet? Whatever, right? So, say Mars and Mars alone—I’m rolling my eyes writing that one—gets pulled in closer to the Sun traveling 35,322,000 miles in just four days—I was told this was going to happen on August 27th—So, Mars traveling at about 36,794 MPH abruptly stops, at some point I’m assuming where Jupiter’s gravity goes “Okay, enough you went to far!” The thing is Mars is a large celestial body, and no not as large as Earth actually about half the size as old blue, but would still have an impact on her.

POP QUIZ: True or False? The Moon has a gravitational effect on Earth? Answer is true, while it is slight, the Moon is not just responsible for ocean tides, but causes the Earth to wobble on its axis. When you spin a top there is a moment when its angular momentum abruptly slows and it wobbles a tad and slowly more drastically before toppling over losing all of its momentum. The Earth is that top right as it starts to wobble.

Imagine what Mars, being that close, would do to Earth or to the Moon. Even Earth’s gravitational pull on Mars would have ramifications. There goes another planet demotion, could Mars become a moon of Earth, that’s math I’m in no mood for. The point is if you believe in this Mars-moon-thing-hocus-pocus, stop it. Just no, no, no, nope!

Let’s gobble up some truth biscuits about this real quick. Mars is in an orbital position right now at its closest-ish approach to Earth. This event occurred already on 31 July not 27 August, so if you not only believed this bafoonary you’re also late to the party. However, Mars is still easy to spot at night and sometimes I think I’m looking at Venus its so bright, until I orient myself and realize I’m looking in the wrong direction. Remember that Mars is not moving real fast so compared to other times in orbit it is still relatively close. The next closest approach will be 6 Oct 2020 where it will be about 38.6 million miles away. Which will not make it look like the Moon, I don’t want to have to have this talk again.