To me, Mars has not been a very interesting planet to observe in the night time sky. Ok, it’s red–really red. But even through a backyard telescope, Mars is just a small red ball. Well, this month (January, 2010) Mars is much more interesting.
Mars reaches opposition on January 29th. At that time, Mars will be on [...]
The New Horizons spacecraft is on its way to Pluto. It left Earth back in January 2006. Now it is almost halfway between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus. When will it reach Pluto? Not until July 2015. Why so long? Pluto is “out there.” How “out there” is it? A scale model can help.
On Saturday, January 2nd, 2010, the Earth was only 147,098,000 kilometers away from the Sun. But don’t worry. Earth is not spiraling down to the Sun for an eventual collision. This is an annually recurring event known as perihelion.
Earth perihelion occurs every year in early January, and marks the minimum distance between Sun and Earth [...]
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