Date: July 19, 2011
Title: The Mars Hoax
Podcaster: TelescopeMan
Links: www.telescopeman.org
www.telescopeman.us
Description: TelescopeMan describes the “Mars will be as big as the full moon” hoax, that comes around as an email or a PowerPoint slideshow every year during July and August. This is known as the Mars Hoax email!
Don’t be fooled by this email. Mars will never be the size of the full moon except in a moderately large telescope.
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Transcript:
***Transcript coming soon.***
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365 Days of Astronomy
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When the Mars Hoax email comes out, i like to point out that the original comparison made sense. Most back yard telescopes are capable of at least 75x magnification. So what could you see on Mars? Well, what can you see on the Moon with just your eyes? You see a few of the biggest light and dark areas. And on Mars, you see a bright white polar cap, and some shades of orange, the big areas. For me, it’s not much. No mountains or even craters. But it’s enough to see that it’s a place with features.
I also like to talk about when to see Mars right now, if it’s visible at all, how big it appears, so how much more magnification you need, and when the next opposition will be. Then maybe, when opposition is in August or September, Mars is a bit bigger, due to the eliptical orbits of Earth and Mars.