Wednesday, August 27, 2003
 
    It has been about 60,000 years since Earth and Mars have been this close.  I hope that you noticed the big red star, that was overhead, and then directly South as many degrees from overhead as your latitude is!  Of course it rises in the East as the sun goes down, and sets in the West as the sun comes up in the East.
 
    It will be over 250 years before we get this close to Mars again.  The Hubble telescope may be decommissioned in 2010.  Whether we shall soon have another more capable telescope in orbit to make up for the greater distances of Mars in the near future is doubtful.  Thus these are going to be "thee"  Standard for years to come.
 
Mars, twin pictures at closest approach at August 27, 2003
 
These pictures above are low resolution for sending easily in the E-mail or downloading from this Web site.  They are also found by clicking on
 
http://www.hubblesite.org/db/2003/22/images/f/formats/web.jpg
 
 
Highest resolution pictures, will take a while to download with telephone line modems, but are worth it!  These high resolution pictures are something to save to your hard drives, as there won't be any better for probably two decades or more.
 
August 26, 2003 at 23:00 UT http://www.hubblesite.org/db/2003/22/images/a/formats/full_jpg.jpg
 
August 27, 2003 at 10:00 UT  http://www.hubblesite.org/db/2003/22/images/g/formats/full_jpg.jpg



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