[LakelandARC] Two Moons

[George Gafford Sr]

Forgive me I'm no space science. It was given to me via email and thought it might be of some interest to others is why I passed it along here on the LARC Yahoo group. 




________________________________
 From: "rfoxwor1 at tampabay.rr.com" <rfoxwor1 at tampabay.rr.com>
To: LakelandARC at yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Tuesday, August 27, 2013 5:30 PM
Subject: Re: [LakelandARC] Two Moons
 


  
This doesn't quite make sense to me. You speak of Mars looking "as large as
the full moon to the naked eye". To me, this sounds as if Mars would have
an apparent diameter. I don't think there is ever a time that Mars (or Venus)
would be so close to Earth as to have an apparent diameter, and not just be
visible as a point source. This is spoken of as subtending an angle. The Moon
subtends an angle (appears to occupy a finite amount of space in the sky) of
from 0.51 to 0.54 degrees (32 arcminutes) (depending on distance from earth).

The stars and planets appear to the naked eye observer as a point source, a
bright object with no size. Mars never gets close enough to earth to appear
as a disc without aid of a telescope.

73 Bob

---- ki4nbe at yahoo.com wrote: 
Dear all,
Two moons on 27th August ..27th Aug the Whole World is waiting for....
Planet Mars will be the brightest in the night sky starting August. It will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. This will cultivate on Aug. 27 when Mars comes within 34.65M miles off earth. Be sure to watch the sky on Aug. 27 @ at 00:30 (It will look like the earth has 2 moons.
The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287.
Share this with your friends as NO ONE ALIVE TODAY will ever see it again.

 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.lakelandarc.org/pipermail/cq-lakelandarc.org/attachments/20130827/f4149677/attachment.html>