So next week, to celebrate Conway's birthday Earth will swing between Mars and the sun. They call this Mars' opposition and it happens on Conway's birthday October 13th. NASA says this is when Mars is directly on the opposite of Earth from the sun.
Go outside right now (if it's night) and glance up at the moon...see that shiny red bright light close to the full moon? That is Mars and throughout October Mars will be the closet to Earth than it will be for another 15 years. That is pretty cool!
Mars rises the highest around midnight each night and shines in the east in the evening and the west before dawn. And tomorrow 10/6 at 10:18 est Mars will be 38,586,816 miles away from Earth, go ahead and round-up. It won't be that close to Earth again until 2035. In 2003 Mars came within 34.65 million miles and that had been the closest in 60,000 years.
Earth orbits the sun every 365 days. Mars orbits every 687 days. And because of their orbiting schedule the two planets reach their closest point to each other approximately every 26 months. The next close approach will be Dec. 8, 2022.
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