Dave Gede Telescope guy.....

** TWO MOONS ON AUGUST 27th 2007 **   The Whole World is waiting for Planet Mars , which will be the brightest in the night sky starting August.   It will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye.   This will cultivate on Aug. 27 when Mars comes within 34.65 M miles of earth.   Be sure to watch the sky on Aug. 27 12:30 am (I S T). It will look like the earth has 2 moons.   The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287.   Share this with your friends as NO ONE ALIVE TODAY will ever see it again.

Is this really happening on August 27th????   Let me know! How are you, Grace and the girls doing?  I haven't seen a post or an update from you for a while.  I miss you buddy! Hugs,

Ooo that sounds like quite a spectacular sight.

Hey Everybody....(and Cira), Sorry I missed this one.   I have been a bit lax in getting to the boards lately.    Life has just gotten very busy.   I think that is a good thing since I am much more worried about the "normal" things again and the rigors of eating and weight and vitamins and everything else that goes with this process, have become second nature.   Gee...it only took about 5 months!  :-) As for the Mars thing.   If Mars EVER looks as big as the full moon in our sky, run.   Well...better yet say a little prayer because we would be in deep trouble.     At it's best (which was 3 years ago in August), Mars was about 27 arc seconds across.   How big is this...well...a little lesson is in order.   If you hold your pinky out, at arms lenght, the width of it covers about 1 degree of sky.   If you break that into 60 parts (so 1/60 of the width of your pinky) you have an arc minute.   Divide that arc minute by 60 again and you have an arc second.   Mars at it's best is less than 1/2 of 1/60 of the width of your pinky at arms lenght.   Pretty small.    The moon on the other hand is about 1/2 of a degree or about half the width of your pinky at arms lenght.    The other problem with this post is that Mars does not rise in the East until about 12:30am.    It really does not get high enough to see well in a telescope until about 3am.   And oh...by the way...right now it is only about 8 arc seconds across.   Remember, that is about 1/10 of 1/60 of the width of your pinky at arms lenght.    What does this mean.   First, it will never get as big as full moon.   Even three years ago when the event was real, it was never more than an orange point of light in the night sky.   Second, right now (and well into the fall) Mars will not even be that interesting in a telescope, much less naked eye.   It is still too far away and too small.     This email goes around each year.   They just change the year and put it back out.   Sorry to dissapoint, but honestly, if the Mars was that big in our sky, we would be in real trouble. Hope everything is going well with folks. Clear Skies,

LOL thanks for the lesson!   I knew it sounded kind of fishy so I figured I check with our own OH astronomer!   Thank you so much for responding you are the best! I am glad that ll is well with you and yours and that you just have been busy. Do not scare me and Gino like that ever again!   Hugs,