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The Oklahoma City Astronomy Club will celebrate its 60th birthday on Saturday with a public holiday that will coincide with the closest approach to the planet Mars to Earth since 2003.
The Club members will bring telescopes to Windsurfers Point northeast corner of Lake Hefner from 8 pm for the Welcome Back March evening. In addition to rare views of Mars in opposition, guests will be able to see an almost full moon and a range of planets, all in the evening sky. It is said that a planet is in opposition when it is directly aligned with the Sun and the Earth. The opposition of Mars will bring the red planet within 36 million miles by the end of July, its closest approach in 15 years and the best opposition until 2035.
The event will also provide views of all but two planets. On July 28, Venus and Mercury will be visible in the west at sunset, Jupiter in the south, Saturn in the southeast, and Mars and the Moon will rise at dusk. Everything can be easily seen through even moderate telescopes. Only the outer planets Uranus and Neptune will be below the horizon until midnight or after.
On clear nights around the opposition, viewers will be able to see the cloudy bands of Jupiter and four large moons, the rings of Saturn and four or five moons. Polar ice caps and some surface elements on Mars and craters and ridges on the Moon up to one kilometer or less in width
The Astronomy Club of Oklahoma City, founded in 1958, meets at 7 pm the second Friday of each month at the Oklahoma Science Museum. The club also owns and operates Cheddar Ranch Observatory in Blaine County, where it recently dedicated a 30-inch telescope that is the largest in the state. The annual Okie-Tex party in the fall in the Panhandle is a club project for 35 years and has become one of the ten largest and best in America.
For more information, visit OKCAstroClub.com. To reach the Windsurfers Point, take Olde Lakeshore Drive south of Hefner Road, just west of the Hefner Bypass.
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