Mars at its closest.

There’s a couple of high points this week both involving Mars, though perhaps I should qualify that, high points may be pushing it a little, maybe a couple of less subterranean would be more apt. Tonight the red planet is at its closest point to us until 2012, and its at its brightest. It’s a mere 63 million miles away, nowhere near as close as in 2003 when it was as close as 35,000,000 miles, the closest it’s been for at least 5000 years. It appears brighter than at any point between 2008 and 2012. At magnitude -1.3 it’s just a shade dimmer than Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, which is far to Mars's right in the southeast.

And if you’ve been following the saga of Spirit, the Mars rover that Nasa landed 6 years ago, which is still functioning, you’ll know that there’s a lot of evidence that Mars was once a lot warmer and wetter than it is now, which considering its freezing cold and bone dry is plausible. So what happened, it’s obvious really the Martians, bless them, didn’t use their compositors adequately, flew off on too many gas guzzling skiing holidays on Olympus Mons and drove their children to school when they should have made them walk.
And on Friday Mars is at opposition, opposite the Sun in Earth's sky. So it will be rising and setting with Friday’s full Moon. And the Moon is at perigee, the closest point to us in its orbit making this the largest and brightest full Moon, by a little bit, of the year. And if you happen to be on Mars looking Earthward, well the blue planet will be invisible buried in the heart of the sun, much like Venus is for us at the moment. If you want to find Mars it’s pretty easy, because its in opposition it where the sun would be 12 hours before. So it’s rising in the SE at sunset, it pokes hits little red head over the horizon at 5:03 and is due South at midnight, very red and very bright, it's in Cancer, nearly midway between Regulus below it and Pollux and Castor above it.
And we have three other planets to see this week.
Mercury is having a good morning apparition. Look for it low in the southeast about an hour before sunrise
Venus is hidden behind the glare of the Sun.
Jupiter still very bright shines in the west-southwest in twilight and sets soon after dark.
Saturn rises in the east around 10 p.m. and stands highest in the south around 4 a.m. In earliest dawn, trace the huge, horizontal line of Spica, Saturn, Regulus, Mars, and Pollux all the way from high in the south to lower in the west-northwest
And that was your night sky for the week ending on the 130th anniversary of the installation of the first electric streetlight Wabash, Indiana.