The Mars/Moon Hoax Rears its Ugly Head

Well, the hysterical claims are starting up yet again. Yes, it’s the annual Mars/Moon madness again. Only this time, the folks claiming that the Moon and Mars will be the SAME SIZE OMG!!! NEVER AGAIN IN THIS CENTURY!!!! are claiming that on August 27th, 2014, we’ll be treated to a view of the Moon AND Mars both the same size in the sky.  The stories are accompanied with an image that implies they’ll be *thisclose* in the sky.  The whole idea is so screwed up it’s not even close to reality.   But, before I get to work dismantling the latest flight of fancy about this subject, the good news is that there is something neat to see in the sky that night (and indeed, for the next couple of weeks).  I’ll talk about that in a minute (below the jump).

Here’s a star chart that I made using Stellarium for the period of time just a few minutes after sunset on the 27th. This shows the sky with indicators for where the Moon and Mars will be. They are roughly 45 degrees apart — nowhere near each other, as it turns out.  So, that immediately puts the lie to the images I’ve seen showing two Full Moons next to each other (apparently one of them is supposed to be Mars). The insets show about how these objects will really look. The Moon will be a very young crescent (NOT FULL, as is shown in some of the graphics I’ve seen). Mars and Saturn will appear as dot-shaped  objects in the twilight. As it get darker, they’ll look brighter (since we won’t be contending with the twilight glow), but by that time, the Moon will have set. The chart doesn’t lie. You can go to Stellarium, download the free program, run it and see for yourself. It’s easy to do. Where did this huge misunderstanding come from?

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