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Mars opposition
On Wednesday, August 27, 2003, at 10:51 GMT, the planet Mars approached Earth closer than ever in the past 60,000 years. It became the brightest object in the night sky, a beautiful red jewel in the sky, with an apparent diameter in the sky of approximately 25 arcseconds (on October 13 of this year, during the opposition to Mars, the diameter of the planetary disk will be 22.4 arcseconds).
In 2003, the two planets, Earth and Mars, were 34,746,418 miles (55,758,006 kilometers) apart. This has not happened since Neanderthals shared the world with the first humans, who, as you know, were fortunate enough to find the Obelisk and learn to use animal thigh bones correctly. The next closest approach will be in 2287 – we will provide you live coverage at that time.
An image from Hubble of Mars taken eleven hours before their closest approach. Source: NASA, J. Bell (Cornell U.) and M. Wolff (SSI).
In the language of astronomers, Mars was in “opposition,” a term they obviously borrowed (without giving due credit) from the chess world. The approach of the two planets occurs regularly when they are both on the same side of the Sun. This time, Earth was as far from the Sun as ever, and Mars as close as ever (the orbits of the two planets are not entirely circular ).
At that time our resident scientist GM John Nunn informed us:
Mars’ close-up suggests this would be a good time for Martians to invade Earth. The last time they did so, in June 1902, they caused considerable devastation. I have a vested interest in this because the first Martian cylinder sank in the sand pits at Horsell Common, just in the way of where I currently live. Apparently they did not use backhoes or parachutes, and it has always been a mystery how the relatively fragile Martians survived the impact slowdown. Coming out of this first landing, they advanced through Ottershaw (where GM Murray Chandler owned a home) and devastated Weybridge and Shepperton. Armed with a heat ray and deadly poisonous gas, it seemed that nothing could stop them. Finally, as everyone knows now, their invasion was defeated when they caught a cold and died.
The event is commemorated in various ways and has inspired various films and radio broadcasts (see, for example, this War of the Worlds film, in which the invasion was switched to America). Interestingly, although the Horsell area has changed a lot in the past century, Horsell Common and its sandboxes remain very similar. I’m a little concerned that Martians may be able to target the same spot again, and I’m carefully watching out for any meteorites that leave a strange green trail. If one falls, I intend to call Tony Blair or George W. Bush – they will know what to do.
The face on Mars
There is another important aspect of this close approach to Mars. Everyone knows that strange rock formations have been photographed on the planet’s surface, the most famous being the “Face on Mars”. It was obtained in 1976 by the Viking Orbiter 1. In the Cydonia region, on Mars, it photographed a region of hills and plateaus along the scarp that separates the highlands with craters south of the low plains, relatively free of craters , to the north .
One of the images showed a hill in the shape of a face, which led many people to argue, mainly in secular literature, that the hill had an artificial shape. The “Face on Mars” website provides us with Viking raw images and a short tutorial (with examples) of image processing techniques applied to create “better looking” images.
Due to the close focus, new images have been obtained that should delight amateur conspiracy theorists around the world. They show the Cydonia region and “face” with unprecedented clarity.
Above is the last Hubble image taken on August 27, 2003 at 10:34 GMT, seventeen minutes before the actual opposition from Mars. The enlargement reveals an incredible geological formation that looks eerily familiar. Maybe our readers can help us (and NASA): who does the rock formation remind you of?
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Wow! Face on Mars was fake!
A week after the previous report appeared on our news page (August 27, 2003) we learned that the “Face on Mars” image was probably flawed. Javier Sánchez de la Barquera from Monterrey, Mexico, informed us that Hubble cannot take photographs with the given zoom, and that the images were taken from satellites in orbit around Mars.
At the top left is the original phase, as it appears on most conspiracy sites, alongside a JPL / NASA image, which is smoothed on the “face”, and below that, an angular view that the makes it even less like a face.
We investigated the matter and discovered that a misguided soul on the ChessBase team had falsified the image, taking a photo of Garry Kasparov to the surface of Mars. We even found what is probably the original source of the image.
Above is a photo of Garry Kasparov during a press conference.
We also tracked wildcard practice efforts: an image of the surface of Mars with many faces of Kasparov copied. The joker simply took the one that seemed most plausible.
Our apologies to the readers who took the entire business seriously.
