dipper@utastro.UUCP (Debbie Byrd) (12/01/85)
The planet Mars is near the star Spica in the morning sky. More -- after this. December 1 Spica and Mars The planet Mars is now near a bright star on the dome of the sky -- high in the southeast before dawn. The star is Spica, the brightest light in the constellation Virgo. Mars and Spica will appear about three degrees apart Monday morning. That's about six times the diameter of the moon. Spica will be brighter than the dim reddish point of light that is Mars. Spica is a lot farther away from us than the planet -- about 275 light-years distant, as compared to light-minutes for Mars. But Spica is intrinsically a very brilliant star. If we could line up Spica and our sun at the same distance away, Spica would appear about twenty-three hundred times brighter. But Spica is actually two stars -- whose centers are separated by only eleven million miles -- about a twelfth of the distance between Earth and the sun. The two stars revolve around each other every four days. The closest that the Earth and Mars ever get is about thirty-four million miles. Mars is much farther away than that from the Earth right now -- but the distance between the two worlds is decreasing. Earth is gaining on Mars in orbit around the sun -- and will catch up with the desert planet this summer. In July, our world will rush between the sun and Mars -- for an excellent "opposition" of Mars in which it will be closer to Earth than it has been for more than a decade. Again, you can see Mars tomorrow morning. It will be the reddish object within six moon diameters of bright Spica -- high in the southeast before sunrise. Script by Diana Hadley. (c) Copyright 1984, 1985 McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin