The 2003 Mars Viewer

The 2003 Mars Viewer will enable you to see what features on Mars are visible for a selected date and time. Save the entire page for offline use.

Other Web Resources

Guide to Observing the Red Planet MARS 2003
A great Mars guide by the Arkansas Sky Observatory.

The Mars Section Observing Alert
The latest CCD images and alerts from around the world.

The Best "Mars Season" Ever?
Will Mars be spectacular this August? A realistic article from the Grand Rapids Amateur Astronomical Association.

Mars Fact Sheet
All the statistics you'll ever need about Mars.

Mars Observing FAQ and Links: 2003 Opposition
This page describes the 2003 opposition of Mars.

Mars Opposition: A Close Look at Mars
From Kid's Cosmos.

The International MarsWatch 2003
Linking amateur and professional communities.

BAA Mars Section Programme
Observing techniques from the British Astronomical Association.

The Planet Mars: A History of Observation and Discovery
An online book by William Sheehan covering the entire history of Mars observing.

This site is hosted at . . .

No doubt you have all read the major magazine covers these past few months and know we have a good apparition of Mars this August.

To sum up, the planet Mars will be closer to Earth than at any time in recorded history.

What's an Opposition? Every 780 days Earth and Mars line up on the same side of the Sun and Mars appears opposite the Sun in our sky.    If an opposition occurs when Mars is near aphelion (farthest from Sun) the distance between Earth and Mars can be 62 million miles. However, if an opposition occurs when Mars is near perihelion (nearest the Sun) that distance will shrink down to 35 million miles. And that's what will happen this August . . . and the closer you are to Mars the more detail you will see through a telescope.

Technically this could be the closest approach, but it won't look any different than any other favorable opposition (1988, 1971 or 1956) when Mars was big and bright.

But why is the 2003 opposition so great? To explain this I need to tell you a little story.

Back when I was a young teenager and had my first telescope I was eager to view the planet Mars. Unfortunately, I had to wait until 4 o'clock in the morning to see Mars high above the horizon.

And so the begging began.

For days I begged my parents to allow me to wake up early and set up my telescope. And guess what? My begging paid off -- they agreed.

That night, before my morning observing session, I was so ecstatic I couldn't fall asleep. Well, I must have eventually drifted off because I had the most vivid dream about Mars. I can still recall the details to this day: A gigantic red planet with glistening polar caps, orange-colored deserts, and magnificent canals. I even saw the moons Phobos and Demos circling around at surrealistic speeds.

Now imagine my disappointment when, after lugging the telescope out into the cold, I saw a puny, orange dot. "What happened to Mars?" I thought to myself as I disassembled the telescope and headed back to the warmth of my bed.

It took a few days before I finally understood why Mars looked so small – IT IS SMALL! Mars is half the size of Earth. And when it is 200 million miles away this tiny planet appears featureless and starlike in any telescope.

So that's the catch. In order to see any detail on the planet's surface you need to be close to Mars. And this August we have a chance to make up for all those previous bad views of Mars as the distance between the two planets shrinks to and all-time low of 34.6 million miles.

Unfortunately, from our northern latitude Mars will be rather low above the southern horizon. And as we all know, the closer you get to the horizon, the more our atmosphere will make the image of a planet "boil".

But I can live with that. I'll do all my observing after midnight when Mars is highest in the sky and I'll wait for a hazy or humid night when the "thick" air will help squelch the turbulence. And if I stay glued to my telescope's eyepiece long enough I just might be treated to a few tantalizing features.

Check out the Mars Viewer and other resources on the left side of this page and have a wonderful view of the "Red Planet" this summer.