Books – Youssef Afifi:
The Jeddah Astronomical Society has said that the sky of the Arab world is witnessing today, Friday 11 November 2022, the conjunction of the diminishing humped moon with the planet Mars, where they will be separated by about 3 degrees in a phenomenon that will be seen with the naked eye.
The association added in a post on its official “Facebook” page that the moon and Mars are tracked towards the northeastern horizon and, as the apparent distance between them is large, they will not appear together in the telescope’s field of view. but it can be done with binoculars.
He explained that observing the brightness of Mars weekly is very important to monitor how it will change dramatically between now and next December’s meeting, these dramatic changes in the brightness of Mars (and its red color) are why the ancients called this planet named after the god of war, sometimes the god of war rested and sometimes getting violent, these changes are part of why Mars is so amazing to see in the night sky.
And the Astronomical Society continued: To understand why the brightness of Mars varies so much in the terrestrial sky, we must realize that Mars is not a very large planet with a diameter of only 6,790 km. More than 20 planets the size of Mars alongside flank in front of Jupiter, so Jupiter always looks bright, because it is so large, but not so for the small Mars, whose brightness is related to its proximity or distance from Earth.
Mars orbits the Sun outside of Earth’s orbit and the distance between Earth and Mars changes. Sometimes the Earth and Mars are on the same side of the solar system and are close to each other, and sometimes, as was the case for most of 2021, Mars and the Earth were on more or less opposite sides of the Earth. The sun is from each other, and therefore Mars appears weak.
The reason the red planet is sometimes bright is because it takes Earth a year to orbit the sun once and Mars takes about two years to orbit once.
So the brightness of Mars decreases and increases in the sky every two years or so, but this is not the only cycle of Mars that affects its brightness, there is also a 15-year cycle of bright and dim encounters.
And in the years that we spend between Mars and the Sun, and even Mars is closer to the Sun, the Earth and Mars are also closer.
The next encounter with Mars, when the planet appears at its peak in two years in the sky, will be in December 2022. Don’t miss the chance to look.
