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While several space probes are currently on their way to Mars, in the next few days the Red Planet can also be easily observed from Earth: in October, the visibility of Mars will peak this year, when the Earth approaches it. on the 6th, he on the 14th is exactly opposite the sun and therefore shines brighter. Hope is still good weather, because visibility in our latitudes will not be as cheap as this year until 2035.
Earth and Mars get closer to each other every 780 days, so there is good visibility every two years. “But cheap is not always cheap,” said Alexander Pikhard of the Vienna Astronomy Working Group (WAA).
The reason is the strongly elliptical orbit of Mars, in contrast to Earth’s orbit, whose distance from the sun varies between 207 and 249 million kilometers. So it all depends on where Earth and Mars are approaching.
Visibility is best when Mars, when it meets Earth, is at the point of its orbit closest to the sun, perihelion. So Earth can get closer to Mars in less than 56 million kilometers (for comparison: this year the shortest distance is 62.1 million kilometers).
Such “perihelion opposition” only occurs every 15 to 17 years, most recently in 2003 and 2018. However, this constellation can be observed unfavorably from Central Europe because Mars is only very low in the sky.
