This bright red dot in the sky? It's Mars

If you looked at the night sky recently, you probably saw Mars, because the planet has become almost impossible to miss.

Due to a cosmic coincidence, Mars is surpassing almost everything else in the sky, and it's now the best time in years to watch the red planet. The orbits of the Earth and Mars periodically bring them together, but this year the two planets are the closest since 2003.

Mars and Earth revolve around the sun at different speeds, but every two years, the planets line up in a straight line with the sun, an alignment known as the opposition. Because the Earth and Mars are on the same side of the sun at this time, they are relatively close.

This year, the opposition occurs on July 27th. Mars will rise in the sky at sunset and go to bed again at sunrise. But this opposition is special because Mars is also close to perihelion.

Perihelion refers to the point in the orbit of a planet when it is closest to the sun. The planets do not have perfect but rather elliptical circular orbits that bring them closer and away from the sun throughout their year.

Because Mars is so close to perihelion when it is in opposition to the Earth this year, it is even closer to us than usual, an alignment called perihelic opposition. The situation was similar in 2003, but everything improved again, bringing Mars close to 60,000 years ago. It will not be closer to Earth than in 2003 until August 28, 2287, according to NASA.

The closer Mars is to Earth, the more it appears in the night sky. Do not believe those memes floating in line that claim that Mars will appear as big as the moon, but it will be the fourth brightest object in the sky, behind the sun, the moon, and Venus. During this period of a few weeks, Mars will even surpass Jupiter.

If you have a telescope, it's a good time to watch Mars, even though you may not be able to spot many surface details. A planetwide dust storm has raged since earlier this summer, and while it seems to be dying, enough dust is still in the atmosphere to make it difficult to see the features of the planet .

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