the closest approach was right on my 40th birthday, which was 
cool.  I was able to make out the polar ice cap from my backyard 
telescope (from my backyard), it was way cool because in the past it 
looked like a bright red star.  This isn't as close, but it is still 
cool.  My kids really dig it.

At 11:18 AM 11/11/2005, Wirt Atmar wrote:
>This is really off-topic, but as you may have noticed, Mars is coming in for
>its second closest approach in 60,000 years now. It's the bright red 
>planet in
>the eastern sky each night now, exceptionally well visible even in city
>lights after 9PM, almost directly overhead by midnight.
>
>As I've mentioned before, I belong to a local astronomy group and one of the
>members, Dave Dockery, took this exceptional photograph just a few nights ago
>using a digital SLR camera, using his own equipment in his backyard:
>
>      http://homepage.ntlworld.com/damian.peach/2005_11_06rgb_DAP.jpg
>
>You can compare the quality of Dave's photograph to that taken by the
>billion-dollar Hubble Space Telescope during Mars' last closest approach:
>
>      http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/mars/mars-hubble-082603-browse.jpg
>
>The two photographs are of the same hemisphere of Mars (more or less),
>although one is upside down in regards to the other. In Dave's 
>image, the large pale
>landmass on the bottom half of the photograph is Arabia Terra, with the
>crater Cassini exceptionally bright for some reason. Arabia Terra 
>lies in the upper
>half of the Hubble image, with the crater Cassini made invisible by the
>lighting angle.
>
>I consider the quality of Dave's photograph to be quite extraordinary, not
>only because of the dollar difference, but because the Hubble has the added
>advantage of not having to look through the murk and mud of the 
>Earth's atmosphere.
>
>At the same time that Mars is rising in east, Venus, which is nearing its
>maxium extension and thus exceptionally bright, is setting in west. 
>Last night
>the Moon lay exactly halfway between the planets and made it very 
>easy to trace
>out the plane of the ecliptic (the line on which eclipses occur). All of the
>planets and the Moon (more or less) lie along this plane.
>
>Each night the Moon moves 1/27th through the sky, thus tonight the Moon will
>be closer to Mars than Venus, but you should still be able to quite easily
>imagine the plane of the ecliptic. It's exactly the same path that 
>the Sun takes
>across the sky during the daytime.
>
>Wirt Atmar
>
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Regards,

Shawn Gordon
President
theKompany.com
www.thekompany.com
www.mindawn.com
949-713-3276

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