Hello Mars, are you there?

There is misinformation flying around in cyberspace regarding a close fly-by of Mars slated for August of this year.

Disregard it — unless you just want to spend a lovely evening watching the heavens anyway.

An e-mail I received goes like this:

“The Red Planet is about to be spectacular! This month and next, Earth is catching up with Mars in an encounter that will culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history.

The next time Mars will be this close is in 2287.

Due to the way Jupiter’s gravity tugs on Mars and perturbs its orbit, astronomers can only be certain that Mars has not come this close to Earth in the last 5,000 years, but it may be as long as 60,000 years before it happens again.

The encounter will culminate on August 27th when Mars comes to within 34,649,589 miles of Earth and will be (next to the moon) the brightest object in the night sky.

It will attain a magnitude of -2.9 and will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide.

At a modest 75-power magnification

“Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. Mars will be easy to spot. At the beginning of August it will rise in the east at 10 p.m. and reach its azimuth at about 3 a.m. By the end of August when the two planets are closest, Mars will rise at nightfall and reach its highest point in the sky at 12:30 a.m. That’s convenient to see something that no human being has seen in recorded history. So, mark your calendar at the beginning of August to see Mars grow progressively brighter and brighter throughout the month. Share this with your children and grandchildren. NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS AGAIN.”

Sorry, not so. According to Sisters’ astronomer, Ron Thorkildson, Mars will not be close to the Earth again until December 2007. The content of the story is true but the event took place in August 2003, when Mars did come within 34 million miles of the earth. At the next opposition in December 2007 we won’t be nearly as close — only about 55 million miles.

The NASA Hubble Space Telescope view above provides the most detailed complete global coverage of the red planet ever seen from Earth. The picture was taken on February 25, 1995, when Mars was at a distance of 65 million miles.

To the surprise of researchers, Mars is cloudier than seen in previous years. This means the planet is cooler and drier, because water vapor in the atmosphere freezes out to form ice-crystal clouds. Hubble resolves Martian surface features with a level of detail only exceeded by planetary probes, such as impact craters and other features as small as 30 miles (50 kilometers) across.

A crescent-shaped cloud just right of center identifies the immense shield volcano Olympus Mons, which is 340 miles (550 km) across at its base. Warm afternoon air pushed up over the summit forms ice-crystal clouds downwind from the volcano. Farther to the east (right) a line of clouds forms over a row of three extinct volcanoes which are, from north to south: Ascraeus Mons, Pavonis Mons, Arsia Mons.

The 16-mile-high volcano Ascraeus Mons pokes through the cloud deck along the western (left) limb of the planet. Other interesting geologic features includes (lower left) Valles Marineris, an immense rift valley the length of the continental United States. Near the image center lies the Chryse basin made up of cratered and chaotic terrain. The oval-looking Argyre impact basin (bottom) appears white due to clouds or frost.

The dark “shark fin” feature left of center is Syrtis Major. Below it is the giant impact basin, Hellas. Clouds cover several great volcanoes in the Elysium region near the eastern (right) limb. As clearly seen in the Hubble images, past dust storms in Mars’ southern hemisphere have scoured the plains of fine light dust and transported the dust northward. This leaves behind a relatively coarser, and less reflective sand predominantly in the southern hemisphere.

The pictures were taken with Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2.