Who You Gonna Believe: A Syrian Head Astronomer...Or Snopes?

You know those emails you get that want you to email all your friends about what are actually urban legends? Looks like a head astronomer in Syria has fallen for one:

Mars Shines Besides the Moon

Mars will appear as a bright light in the sky besides the moon in a rare event that won't recur until 2287 AD.

Head of the Syrian Amateur Astronomers Association (SAAA) Mohammad al-Asiri said the distance between planet Earth and Mars will be approximately 65.34 million miles (99.3 kilometers). Earth will seem to have two moons at midnight.

Al-Asiri said that the Earth, Sun and Moon will form a rectilinear, with Earth in the middle, the phenomenon is known as alignment.

"Alignment phenomenon occurs every 780 days, Earth and Mars stands at the nearest point to each other, Mars then looks bigger and brighter," He added.

The closest recorded distance between Earth and Mars were in August 27th 2003, at 21.51 GMT with just 55.76 million kilometers. This marked the nearest distance between the neighboring planets in 60.000 years. This event won't recur again until the year 2287, it will be, at that time, 55.69 million kilometers.

But according to Snopes, this is a hoax that goes around periodically. After reproducing some of the emails going around, Snopes debunks the hoax:

Some things never go out of style, and this "Mars Spectacular" message is one of them. It's yet another example of a widely-circulated e-mail containing information that was once true but which continues to be forwarded around year after year, long after the information it contains has become outdated.

Mars did make an extraordinarily close approach to Earth several years ago, culminating on 27 August 2003, when the red planet came within 35 million miles (or 56 million kilometers) of Earth, its nearest approach to us in almost 60,000 years. At that time, Mars appeared approximately 6 times larger and 85 times brighter in the sky than it ordinarily does. (The earlier message quoted above was often reproduced with an unfortunate line break in the middle of the third sentence of the second paragraph, leaving some readers with the mistaken impression that Mars would "look as large as the full moon to the naked eye" without realizing that the statement only applied to those viewing Mars through a telescope with 75-power magnification.)

Although Mars' proximity to Earth in August 2003 (referred to as a
perihelic opposition) was a rare occurrence, the red planet comes almost as near to us every 15 to 17 years. To the unaided observer, Mars' appearance in August 2003 wasn't significantly larger or brighter than it is during those much more common intervals of closeness.

Mars had another close encounter with Earth in in 2005, but that occurrence took place in October (not August), and the red planet appeared about 20% smaller than it did during similar circumstances in 2003. Mars also made a close approach to Earth in December 2007, but even then it was still about 55 million miles away from us, not nearly as close as it was in 2003 or 2005. Not until 2018 will our view of Mars be similar to the one that was available in 2003, and it won't be until the year 2287 that Mars will come closer to Earth than it did back in 2003.

As Texas astronomer Torvald Hessel observed in a 2006 interview about the perennial "Mars Spectacular" message:

Q: What's the truth?

A: Mars gets close to Earth every two years. So, last year, Mars was very close. Three years ago, it was spectacularly close ... And right now, I'm sad to say, Mars is actually behind the Sun; we can't see it at all.

Q: How wide spread is this falsehood?

A: People get excited about it, start to send e-mail ... and every August we see this e-mail coming back and I get a lot of e-mails about it, of course.

Interestingly, while Al-Asiri claims distance between Earth and Mars will be 65.34 million miles, the hoax emails specify 34.65--is that an odd coincidence that the numbers are transposed, or did Al-Asiri really get his info not from research but from an email? If so, he (or the newspaper) should not that the emails claim the next time this will happen is in 60,000--not 60.000--years. And according to Snopes: while Al-Asiri is correct that it won't be till 2287 that the earth and moon will be closer than in 2003, we only have to wait until 2018 that the distance will be similar.

Well, he is the head of the Syrian Amateur Astronomers Association...

Technorati Tag: Urban Legends.