Mars stars in our January skies

The red planet plays a major role in the sky during the first month of 2010. Mars rises in the east around 9 p.m. at the beginning of January and will be visible in the sky all night.

Following the ecliptic, or path of the sun, the planet will set in the west around 8 a.m. By the end of January, Mars will rise a little after 6 p.m. and set around 6 a.m.

From the ground, Mars resembles a large orange star and is easily noticeable, shining at a magnitude of -1.3, almost as bright as Sirius, the sky's most radiant star. This month it will sit just to the right of Leo's sickle, with Orion farther to its right.

Through binoculars or a small telescope, the disc shape and color of Mars are easy to distinguish. Viewed through a medium to large telescope, the planet's surface features begin to appear, including its polar ice caps and the light and dark markings on its red surface.

Mars reaches opposition every 26 months - and the next occurrence will be Jan. 29. Opposition takes place when Earth is situated directly between a superior planet (or a comet) and the sun. A planet at opposition is a planet on its best display. Mars will be just 62 million miles from us, placing it almost five times closer than it gets at its farthest point.

Two days earlier, on Jan. 27, Mars will officially make its closest approach to Earth. Its opposition and closest approach don't happen on the same day because Earth and Mars have slightly elongated and tilted orbits relative to one another and their paths are not exactly parallel. Mars will reach opposition again in March 2012.

Every so often, Mars comes especially close. The last time this occurred was August 2003, when Mars was twice as large and three-quarters as bright as it is this time.

The 2003 event inspired the Mars hoax e-mails that have probably graced your inbox at some point, and possibly still do, exclaiming that "Mars will be the same size as the full moon! … It won't be this close to earth again for thousands of years! … No one alive will ever see this again!" Help end a rampant myth and don't pass it on.

Yes, Mars was as large as the full moon - through a telescope with 75x magnification. And while the 2003 opposition was indeed the closest Mars has come to us in almost 60,000 years (33 million miles), it still resembled a large orange star, not a giant planet floating in the sky as the e-mails would have us believe. Not to mention, Mars comes almost as close every 15 to 17 years.

Opposition certainly grants us a superb opportunity to view Mars, but we still need a little help from binoculars or a telescope to see the details.

This is the opinion of Melissa Babcock.