mars

Guide to Observing Mars in 2025

January 1, 2025 by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Solar System

An image of Mars captured by Damian Peach in June 2018.

The planet Mars is one of the most interesting planets to observe with a small telescope, but also one of the most difficult. The planet only gets close enough to Earth to give up much detail just once every 780 days (about two years and two months), and when it does make an apparition, it still appears relatively small compared to Jupiter or Saturn. But observing Mars is worth the effort. It’s the only planet to reveal an appreciable amount of surface detail in a small telescope, and it also features occasional surprises such as dust storms and local fogs and cloud banks.

Seeing Mars takes a little practice, however, as well as the right tools for the job. This guide will help you understand what you can see on the surface of Mars, especially near the opposition of January 15-16, 2025. And it will help you get the best view of this remarkable world with a telescope and a few essential accessories [Read more…] about Guide to Observing Mars in 2025

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The Full Moon Occults Mars at Opposition

November 30, 2022 by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Solar System

Mars approaches a grazing lunar occultation on September 5, 2020. Image courtesy of Delberson Tiago de Souza at Astrobin under the Creative Commons License.

Set a reminder – and hope for clear sky – on the night of December 7-8 as a remarkable event takes place – a full December ‘Cold Moon’ passing in front of Mars just two hours before the planet reaches opposition. The event is visible through parts of western Europe, Canada, and the U.S. except for the eastern seaboard, the southeast, and Alaska. You can see the event without optics, with binoculars, or the telescope of your choice. It will be an astronomical event to remember [Read more…] about The Full Moon Occults Mars at Opposition

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Mars Meditations

July 31, 2018 by Joe Bergeron Filed Under: Solar System

A composite image of Mars from the Viking Orbiter (image credit: NASA)

The planet Mars is coy. It spends most of its time as a relatively inconspicuous star-like object, only moderately bright, drifting barely noticed though the sky, little seen, or sometimes hiding behind the Sun.

Once every two years it grows bolder. It decides to put on a show. But even then, it’s sneaky about it, gathering its glory in the late hours of the night, seen mainly by dedicated astronomers, those who know what to expect and where to look.

And then, at the apex of its splendor, it rises at sunset, blazing across the sky all night for a few brief weeks, revealing itself in a level of detail far beyond what it will normally display [Read more…] about Mars Meditations

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Cosmic Shipwreck

July 15, 2018 by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Astronomy Images and Video

The summer Milky Way and an abandoned sailboat in rural northern Virginia. Click to open in a new window. Image credit: Brian Ventrudo.

An abandoned sailboat in a grassy field in northern Virginia makes for a good, if unexpected, foreground for this image of the summer Milky Way. Mars is at lower left, while Saturn is below center, and just below the airplane trail. The silvery rectangle of stars above the plane trail is the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud (Messier 24). Many pink nebulae and silver-gray star clusters fleck the trail of the Milky Way. Look to the upper left of the image to see the little upside-down ‘Coat Hanger’ asterism known as Collinder 399.

Image taken on July 8, 2018 near Warrenton, VA, with a Nikon D750 and Tamron 15-30mm lens at f/2.8, a NiSi natural night filter, ISO 3200, 20 seconds.

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The Man of Mars – Percival Lowell and the Invention of the Red Planet

March 26, 2018 by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: History and Famous Astronomers

More than most planets, Mars has captured the public imagination as a place of mystery, a target of exploration, and possibly the only other place in the solar system that may have once harbored life. The planet figured prominently in science fiction, from the early tales of E.R. Burroughs and H.G. Wells to the latest work of Andy Weir. And Mars is now on the radar of hands-on visionaries like Elon Musk who plan to colonize the planet in the coming decades. The popular fascination with Mars began more than a century ago in the fertile imagination of Percival Lowell, a wealthy and intellectually restless astronomer who speculated about intelligent life on Mars and left a lasting legacy for astronomy. [Read more…] about The Man of Mars – Percival Lowell and the Invention of the Red Planet

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