Topic: Apparition of Mars and its Beehive Passage (Read 34 times)
Centaur Tenured Chicago Astronomer member is offline
Joined: Sept 2004 Gender: Male Posts: 934 Location: Arlington Heights, IL
Apparition of Mars and its Beehive Passage « Thread Started on Oct 19, 2009, 8:52pm »
Mars is returning to our evening skies! It is now rising before midnight daylight time for most observers. All of my following calculations are true for both UT and American Central Time dates.
Mars will achieve western quadrature (90° from Sun) on 2009 OCT 29. On that date it will appear as a gibbous 88.6% illuminated with a magnitude of +0.5 and an angular diameter of 7.8 arcseconds. Apparent retrograde movement will commence on DEC 20. Its closest approach for this apparition will occur on 2010 JAN 27 at 0.66396 AU with an angular diameter of 14.1 arcseconds. Greatest brilliance with magnitude -1.3 along with greatest elongation and the opposition in longitude with declination of N 22.2 ° will occur on JAN 29. Opposition in right ascension will occur on JAN 30. Apparent direct motion will resume on MAR 10. Mars will achieve eastern quadrature on MAY 04. On that date it will appear as a gibbous 89.7% illuminated with a magnitude of +0.8 and an angular diameter of 7.1 arcseconds. Conjunction with the Sun in longitude will occur on 2011 FEB 04.
On Halloween (the night of 2009 OCT 31/NOV 01) Mars (mag +0.4) will appear to move through the Beehive (M44 Praesepe) cluster in Cancer. I predict that early on NOV 01 Mars will pass 4.1 arcminutes south of 39 Cancri (mag +6.4) at 07:14 UT, and 2.2 arcminutes south of 40 Cancri (mag +6.6) at 08:42 UT. Be careful regarding the timing, since it will be the night of the change from daylight time back to standard time in America.
I’ve created a graphic demonstrating the current apparition of Mars, including its passage through the Beehive. It can be seen by clicking: http://www.curtrenz.com/astronomical
Photos and descriptions of Mars (including the Beehive passage) would be welcome additions to this thread.
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